The power of the Internet

Today I wrote a bunch. Exciting. I know. But good. So instead of another boring post about writing, I'm going to post about writers instead, specifically the Writers' Guild of America (WGA).

I recently read Surrendering America, a well-written post by Toni McGee Causey over at Murderati. Causey points out that this strike threatens to affect us in far greater ways than just missing out on new top ten lists and being left hanging over that cliff that most of today's TV shows like to dangle over. For one, the strike has larger economic implications than one might think. California's economy rivals the economies of most nations. What happens if a key industry in that economic force shuts down for an extended period of time? Additionally, Causey argues that a poor outcome for the writers will give corporations an even tighter stranglehold over all media and what gets heard or seen.

I'm not going to argue for or against either of those points. However, I did get to thinking about the situation, and I've come up with a good solution for the writers.

It seems the major point of contention in the negotiations is over Internet broadcasting. The writers want to be paid when their products are distributed via the Internet, and management says that the profitability of the Internet is too uncertain at this point for them to commit to paying the writers for this form of distribution.

This point of contention is actually the WGA's way out. Internet distribution.

From what I understand, the WGA has the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) and the Teamsters on its side. Combined they have the creative network of the writers, the talent of the actors, and the production of the crew. Add that to the financial resources and connections held by some of the members of these unions, and you've got all you need to make a high quality movie or TV show. The only thing they don't have covered is distribution. Well, YouTube seems to have proven that the Internet means you no longer need corporate backing to reach a very large audience. And Radiohead's recent endeavour of foregoing the record label and the traditional release by distributing its latest album online seems to imply a certain viability to the approach. So why don't all of the unions get together and start making stuff and distributing it online? We all know that Internet distribution is the direction everything seems to be heading right now anyway. So why not just get to it?

Plus, wouldn't it be awesome if the writers, who were told by management that they weren't going to be making money from the Internet, were to turn around and make a lot of money off of the Internet?

So for all of you big Hollywood types who read my blog, get to it.

I'm grateful for anyone who made it through this post to get to the part where I'm grateful (20).