Spinsterblog

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and with it comes a day of gluttony. And with that gluttony comes the opportunity to remember those less fortunate, and to remember those fighting The Man because they are getting screwed.

Okay, so it’s probably not what the Pilgrims were thinking of on that first Thanksgiving, but I’m sure that if they had a local Best Buy to run to on the day after Thanksgiving, they would have wanted the writers of “40 Year-Old Virgin” to get eight whole sense from their purchase. And I bet that when they missed last week’s episode of “The Office,” they’d want the show’s writers to get a percentage of the cash that the studio makes on advertising from their website.I hear Pilgrims were big with that.

I am most emphatically *not* a writer, and so I link you to people who can explain things better than I can. For example, Douglas McGrath explains “Why We’re on Strike.” Quoting Mindy Kaling paraphrasing Steve Carell: Steve Carell put it best when he said: “Imagine if when the writers on the Bob Hope radio show were told by their employers: “Hey guys, we want to use your material, for free, for this crazy new medium, television, and we don’t want to pay you for it, cuz the medium is too crazy and dicey and we’re not sure it’s going to pan out.”…TEN YEARS AFTER EVERYONE IN AMERICA OWNED A TELEVISION.” (I’m paraphrasing poorly the brilliant words of the lovely Steve Carell, please don’t quote him saying that. You can I guess, sort of attribute it to me and maybe kinda Steve but not in any way that makes him look lame.)

And should you not be moved by the logic because you think TV writers haul in crazy amounts of cash, I give you Late Show Writers on Strike: Quickly, lest you think we are a bunch of spoiled brats just looking for a raise, the big issue, money from original content shown on the Internet and other new media, is our way of replacing the money we are losing over the disappearing residuals. Residuals are not a bonus. They are the way writers live when they are between jobs. The standard writers contact is up for renewal every 13 weeks. You can have a five- year contract, but they can let you go every 13 weeks without paying you any more as long as they give you a month’s notice. That is the deal we all enter into. There are 12,000 writers in the guild. You need to make $30,000 a year in guild earnings to keep your health insurance. Last year, 6000 didn’t reach that figure. Half.

And if you’d prefer a more artistic representation of this situation, tomorrow there will be documentary shorts with all kinds of actors from TV and movies at SpeechlessWithoutWriters.com.
So how can you help? (I am pretending that there are people who read this blog that I have no already harassed about this/know more than I do about it.)

• Fans4Writers.com has all kinds of ways to participate.
• Want a nifty graphic for your website or to replace your Facebook picture? Lexigeek has them in all kinds of TV flavors.
• Pencils2MediaMoguls will be sending trucks full of pencils (Pencils Down!) to the media moguls to show the studios how pissed the fans are. It’s a mere dollar per box to support your favorite TV show, the pencils are environmentally responsible, and they will come with suggested donation instructions, since the studios certainly aren’t going to be using them.
• Tell the Advertisers! If the advertisers feel the pressure, they’ll make sure the studios do, too.
• Keep up-to-date with news from Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood and United Hollywood.
• Want a form of action that requires only passive behavior on your part? Don’t watch TV online. Don’t visit networks’ websites to watch TV shows, don’t buy shows off of iTunes or amazon unbox or that sort of thing. You can show the networks you support the writers by not lifting a finger and therefore making sure that they aren’t getting as much revenue from the medium.

So, please go do your part. It’s bad enough that I have to wait until April to see season four of Battlestar Galactica. If I cannot see the second half of the season and never find out who the final Cylon is and if they get to Earth…well, let’s just say it will not be pretty. (Sidenote: Don’t forget to set your TiVos for Razor on Saturday!)