23 November 2007

"Getting Paid is the Name of the Game"

Not the Daily Show has a great take on the Writers' strike that has sent all the late-night talk shows and much of daytime TV into reruns. Watch for a bunch of wintertime lameness on the tube as well as new episodes of top shows aren't being written. The issue is, of course, money - the media companies say they don't know how to value Internet content in order to pay the writers fair residual fees, while at the same time... well, watch the video for the creative spark, and great satire, of The Daily Show.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Anonymous said...

They are lucky they were getting paid at all for the drivel they have been writing lately. TV shows these days are vying for the title of "least worst" rather than the best show. Fans are complaining about deteriorating quality of plot lines and then the writers dare ask for more money?!?!

Mark Federman said...

Although I agree with Anonymous about the "deteriorating quality of plot lines" (and didn't Tim Kring apologize for the dreadful Heroes season 2?), the issue isn't more money for writers for writing. The issue is getting paid fairly for reuse of their material in other than conventional broadcast media.

As the Not the Daily Show clip points out, the big media outlets are quite inconsistent on this point. On the one hand, they claim that alternative delivery mechanisms cannot be valued. On the other, they go after everyone from YouTube to you-next-door for specific dollar amount damages, claiming infringement of their highly valued content. Try as they might, they can't have it both ways.