The fools at the Guild

America Wants to Know has some familiarity with the problems involved in talent union strikes (See "Actors Are Surer Bet to Win Ad Strike" and "The Screen Actors Guild and the Commercials Strike of 1978-79") and is sympathetic to the goals of the Writers Guild in its fight with motion picture and television producers.

But this strike is the biggest mistake since the merger of Time Warner and America Online.

The writers are angry and resentful that they were muscled into accepting a chintzy cut of DVD sales during earlier contract negotiations, and now that DVDs are about to follow eight-track tapes into the giant technology graveyard in the sky, the writers want a reasonable share of revenue from Internet and new media distribution of their work.

Here's a prediction: the writers will stay out on strike for six months, the TV schedule will groan under the weight of dancing celebrities, and in the final analysis, the writers will get nothing from Internet and new media distribution.

Here's another prediction: the companies that own studios and networks will spend a bottomless pit of money keeping up with the endlessly changing technological wizardry that allows TV shows and movies to be distributed on devices that look like props from Get Smart, only to discover that the secure encryption they paid fortunes to develop was just defeated by a fifteen-year-old boy in Amsterdam on a dare from two of his friends.

Here's another prediction: the advertisers that cheerfully sign deals to push their advertising into the faces of people who are using the Internet will learn that people don't really look at advertising on the Internet; and if they do, it's only to find the "Skip This Ad" button, because the blinking animation is slowing everything down or blocking the content that took ten minutes to find. And wait until advertisers find out how many of the Internet users they think are live people are actually click-fraud, robots, spiders, and various other human-free site-reading devices that will never buy a car or a new color laser printer.

It's just bad news all around.

The best way to make money on the Internet is to fool Wall Street investors into thinking you've got something that one day will make a lot of money on the Internet. Be sure to sell your stock before they find out the truth, which is that everybody using the Internet wants everything for free, and if you don't give it to them, somebody else will.

Here's some free advice for the Writers Guild. Let it go. Secure your pension and welfare benefits and get your money up front.


Copyright (like it helps) 2007.

Editor's note: You might be interested in this Los Angeles Times story from 11-8-07, "AOL Plunge Overtakes Time Warner Profit," by Times staff writer Thomas S. Mulligan.

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