asta77

Here's a link to a EW article. The man nailed EVERY SINGLE DETAIL perfectly. Even the reasons I haven't joined the Guild! And no one's done that well!

Bravo! Bravo Mr. Harris!

Read this brilliant OP/ED piece here - http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20159387,00.html- then pass the link around!"

And just in case you don't know about the WGA strike, here's a quick recap:

et me see if I can help a little too. The acronymy people are AMPTP (Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers) - they are the people who are pretty much in charge of what gets made for television and movies. They're the people in charge of ALL the money behind movies and tv.

When a movie gets made and gets put on DVD, a lot of people get a cut from it. For example, I know personally that on one of the movies I worked on, one of the actors was receiving a DOLLAR per DVD sold. The writer gets 1/3 of a cent. The writer gets an upfront salary (just like the actor, the director, and the producer.) but unlike the actor, director and producer, the writer never sees any more money. Period. When the show airs on cable (HBO, Showtime, etc) all those other people get money. The writer doesn't. When it airs on television, same thing. And just so you know, if a writer sells a story to a magazine or writes a book (anything in print anywhere else) they receive royalties of it's reprinted there - and for every copy sold. For some reason, movies and television programs can be distributed any/everywhere without the writer ever being paid again.

Now, on 'new media' (you'll hear that a lot) it's because of something similar. See these television writers have the programs being made available through downloads (iTunes or amazon.com) for a price, streamed live for free (but there's advertising so there's money coming in) and 'on demand' (where there are commercials - so someone paid again) - and the writers see none of it. Also, with BSG or The Office (just as examples) because the lawyers have called 'webisodes' promotional material, the writers get NOTHING at all for their ORIGINAL WEBISODES. So the Razor episodes that are playing RIGHT NOW for the 'lead up' to the big BSG movie? They were tacked on to the writers workload - they're original content (which means that they are a new story no one's seen before) and they are generating money (because of advertising) but the writers NEVER GET PAID A PENNY FOR THEM.

So the writers are and have been pretty much given the raw end of the deal for the past twenty years while the acronym-y people have been making money off of their work without paying for it.

THAT is why they're striking.

I wasn't aware of those weblinks, so thanks so much for posting them.

And I may be wrong about the technicalities, but with regard to the Razor mini-sodes...it was described before that those are scenes which were written as part of the feature-length cut of Razor, but were later deleted from the broadcast version because of time constraints. The network decided to air those deleted scenes as a promotional ramp up for the movie, and they will be included within the DVD release just as they were originally intended. So it wasn't actually additional work for the writers that they never got paid for; it was a case of creative presentation of material that was always inclusive to the production of the movie. The pre-season 3 webisodes, however, were a totally different situation, and the writers did get shafted on that one. I completely support the writers and if I can work out the logistics I may even be joining them on the picket line for an hour or two tomorrow.

The webisodes are a whole other matter, but you are correct about the flashbacks being part of 'Razor' and simply deleted from the TV broadcast due to time constraints. And SciFi even says at the end of each flashback that full credits can be found on the SciFi website, something they never did with the webisodes because no one was credited for or paid for their work.