On the Line

Back from my Monday off, I spent a bit of the afternoon -- an extended lunch hour -- picketing with WGA writers.

The group I was with seemed to be in pretty good spirits. The talk was about shows they're not writing, and how other people they know are doing. One scribe mentioned that the the tv series on which he was working is now in jeopardy of being canceled (apparently the network might jettison the balance of its show order. I told him I hoped his series didn't end up a casualty of the strike, he said "Yeah, me too. But I might be off at a bar tonight...")

The general hope that I overheard: That the negotiators reach an agreement soon. Writer-director Craig Mazin has some thoughts on that:

Victory requires the following.

1. Maintenance, at very least, of status quo for separated rights

2. A better-than-DVD rate for electronic sell-through on the internet

3. A reasonable formula for streaming reuse

... if we’ve gotten past some of the major stumbling blocks and boiled it down to the serious stuff at hand…and more importantly, if the AMPTP is ready to acknowledge certain basic realities…then we might be back to work soon ...

For everybody's sake, I hope a new contract everyone can live with emerges from the talks, and soon.