Hollywood Writers Up in Arms Over "Residuals"

In this day and age of free YouTube downloads, webisodes, and mobisodes, "creatives" of Hollywood think they are shortchanged. They want a piece of the "backend." They want "residuals." That is, they want to get paid everytime, for example, you log on to ABC's web site and watch any episode of any show.

Or else? WGA, The all-powerful Writers Guild of America, will go on strike on October 31. So the studios are busy like crazy stocking up on extra scripts and shooting all those back-logged episodes so they'll be ready if and when the writer's strike hits Hollywood like a tsunami.

"Tsunami"? Well, perhaps I went overboard with that description because the last time WGA went on strike in the 1980s over the home video rights, 9,000 WGA members walked out. But then they came back for only 0.3 cents on the dollar! It turned out the writers' pocketbooks bled a lot faster that the "suits" in corporate offices. It's an embarrassing episode that most WGA members would rather forget.

One alternative is for the suits and the creatives share the ad revenues on these sites. But probably that's not going to happen anytime soon since the suits accuse the writers with splitting the profits but not the risks as, for example, when a show that has cost tens of millions of dollars bombs completely.