I noticed this over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, and it made me chuckle. I can just see it:
Hot T-shirt for the picket lines: the one where Jon Stewart of The Daily Show imitating “the studios” by raising his hands like he’s crazy and saying, “The internet – it’s too new!!”
I’d link the clip but, as many people have noted that online content is one of the issues in dispute, I think I’ll hold off. If you want to see it again, it’s out there (on Defamer, other sites); you’ll be able to find it.
UPDATE: (same source)
Buzz about what’s going on at The Office. Rumors that the Teamsters are refusing to cross the picket line over at the studio there, and the show may shut down shooting. Word that both Steve Carell and Rain Wilson did not show up today in support of the writers strike, so The Office had a short production day.
Yay, The Office people!!
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Wouldn’t it be a good thing to view online clips? To demonstrate how important they are and that the writers should therefore be given lots of money for them? Or am I missing something?
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@ Shruti,
I think Jon’s point in the clip (and John Oliver’s from the picket lines this morning) was that currently, the studios make money off of online content. The writers write it, the clips go up, advertisers pay to place their ads on it (for Viacom, at least), the studios make money. Currently, however, none of that money goes to the writers who created it.
There seem to be diverging points of view as to whether watching the clips *now* would help or hurt the writers; some believe that we shouldn’t watch because the writers are not being compensated, others believe that we should watch a lot to show that the demand is there.
I, personally, think that the studios are well aware of the fact that online content is a revenue-generator. They get to sell ad space, there’s almost no overhead, and they’re constantly touting it to their investors as a growth area. Because of that, I think that the AMPTP’s argument (that the writers shouldn’t get residuals because they don’t know if “new media” will be profitable) is a lot of hot air, and I’m choosing not to watch the Comedy Central-provided video at this time. Since I’m assuming that Comedy Central is able to track the number of times their videos are viewed/embedded, I decided against embedding their clip here.
I know that viewpoints on this differ, so I’m not trying to make up peole’s minds for them; that’s why I mentioned that Defamer, etc., is also hosting this clip. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to stop embedding their clips altogether for the duration of the strike (that might be difficult, depending on how long the strike lasts), but that was my reasoning behind not embedding it for this post.
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Good for Steve and Rainn; I hope other famous names follow their example.
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I was skeptical at first, but I think John Oliver was pretty clear today. The networks make money from sites like thedailyshow.com, the writers don’t make anything. So until there’s a resolution or a different message from the TDS writers, I think avoiding the site whenever possible is a good idea.
Just my opinion, but there you go.
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