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The AMPTP PR machine is rusting from flopsweat. First, it gave its AMPTP.org website an extreme makeover after a coupla comedy writers spoofed the old one (see AMPTP.com.) I have no doubt that John Aboud and Michael Colton and their satirical team are working on AMPTP.com 2.0 as we speak. That said, the latest AMPTP news release, issued in response to the WGA filing unfair labor practice charges against the media companies, misquotes that “old lawyers’ adage: When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. And when you don’t have either the law or the facts on your side, you pound the table.” The actual saying is “When the law is against you, pound the facts, when the facts are against you, pound the law, and when they’re both against you, pound the table”. For a bunch of Democrats, the flackery of Fabiani & Lehane sure are committing a heck of a lot of Bushisms.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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here’s a twist:
maybe Fabiano & Lehane are secretly in support of unions in general and the WGA in particular, and their bizarre contribution to the WGA’s cause is to provide really poor PR services to the AMPTP! way to undermine from within! in which case we should be *thanking* them for doing the craptastic job they’re doing.
right. or maybe they’re just incompetent jerks.
To “Glad to be not in the business”:
It’s hard for an outsider like me to know what kinds of contract terms and rates really are reasonable, and I think AMTP representatives have every right to try to drive a hard bargain and make sure any increases in writer compensation are tied to real increases in Web revenue.
And, sure, yes, the writers have a huge stake in the survival and transformation of the production system run by AMTP members. AMTP members may let a fair amount of dreck through and bury some gold, but they increase the value of TV and film writing by filtering out most of the worst dreck.
But I think one reason that fans are supporting the WGA is that we see that this strike is as much about us as it is about the WGA members. Many of us already do Web work, and we see that our employers have unrealistic ideas about how much Web content we can produce, or how many e-mails we can answer in an hour, or how many Web orders we can process per day, or how many hours per day we can be expected to work.
Web work is real work and has to be paid for with real money, period.
Right now, it looks as if the AMTP is saying that a year’s worth of Web redistribution rights has a value of only $250, compared with a $20,000 value for a year’s worth of TV rebroadcast rights. In other words, that Web work is worth 1.25% of TV work.
The AMTP also has said a 15-minute made-for-the-Web script should be worth just $1,300. If 1 minute of show time means 1 page of script, and a writer can produce a decent page (and do the administrative and marketing work associated with that page) every 4 hours, that translates into an hourly rate of about $21.67.
That’s probably less than the true minimum wage for college-educated Los Angeles and New York residents with clean criminal records, and it’s probably the equivalent of a full-time staffer earning just $10.88 per hour, which is worse than many fast food restaurant workers in big cities get paid.
And if the AMTP can do that to writers who write for glamorous shows like “The Office,” goodness knows what the employers of us fans can do to frumpy old us.
Certainly, compensation has to reflect actual revenue and actual expenses. But, as billionaires such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros will tell you, letting employers destroy middle-class workers simply to pump up executive benefits and profits to absurd, robber-baron levels is bad for everyone in the long run. Serfs who live in huts and get paid in sacks of barley do not go to movies, or buy advertisers’ products.
Re: NEW FALL LINE UP 2008 by TV insider
Truly hilarious! I have read and viewed many terrific and funny strike-related creations by my fellow writers, and this is one of the best. You’re all so talented out there it’s an inspiration!
Who has time to build a web site when you are counting money? What a mess this has turned out to be.
I got a major glimpse at what the WGA is dealing with. The AMPTP never thought to also register DOT COM as a domain?! I mean, that’s such a basic move. Maybe they really don’t understand the internet.
You’re surprised that Democrats are capable of saying messed-up things? I could make you a list.
I love the “working writers make more than surgeons” slam in the info box on their website that’s right next to their statement where they claim to be concerned about “working writers”!
Anyone who happens to knows a writer and a surgeon knows exactly what a fallacy this is!
Did anyone notice that the AMPTP may have changed the color on its website (a really lame quickie redo) but not on their “favicon” which comes up in the address line when you load the site? It’s still blue like the parody site.
Oh, and one comment said “phased” when I think they meant “fazed.” Or maybe they meant it in Star Trek terms…
According to their new & improved website ™ ©, writers make more than surgeons in LA. They even claim that this is from the Labor Dept., but conveniently leave out a link to the facts.
Now I went to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics site & found that surgeons in the LA area average $170,360 per year & writers in the entertainment business average $105,760 per year.
So AMPTP is lying again.
What did they think, that none of us are smart enough to go to the Labor Dept’s. site & find out the facts!
I love this tidbit from their ‘dollars and sense’ page:
Revenues obtained in the initial market of release no longer cover the costs of production, much less distribution and marketing. There is no such thing as supplemental or ancillary or secondary market any longer and hasn’t been for years. All windows and media are needed for the vast majority of productions just to recoup initial costs, much less break even or make a profit.
HA!
Also, their math reminds me of a quote from ‘Naked Gun.’ “He has a 50/50 chance of survival. But there’s only a 7% chance of that.”
Maybe the fact that the AMPTP is using an old lawyers’ adage to make their point should be a clue as to where these people are coming from. Yes, because lawyers are the people we all trust the most.
The AMPTP needs to stop lying because that is not what they tell their shareholders and I should know, I’m one of them.
401k is a mighty thing.
Another thing the SEC doesn’t like you to lie on your reports…so what is it, AMPTP?
The AMPTP need to clean house in their executive suites and put their house in order…they know rule…the creators of the products shares the profit…if they get paid, then we all get paid.
Everybody shares the risk…as it been said before, residuals are deferred payments on future profits. But unlike the free money the Producers make (i.e stock options) we have to trust their lying numbers but unforturnately Corporate Greed has gotten so outrageous they want everything.
So everything of nothing leaves nothing, so who’s laughing now?
I hope Wall Street and the Advertisers understand a little how this thing work…without the writers, directors, actors and the BTL there is no product of value created. This is a well run collaborate process that should respect all parts…unfortunately some in the AMPTP and others forgot that.
Rupert Murdoch need to stop talking on TV and start negotiate with the writers reps…as he was one of those hardline CEOs trying to break the unions and they thought the WGA would be a easy target.
The AMPTP web site did not miss quote the old lawyer’s adage as has been reported.
Unless I’m mistaken, the quote the AMPTP used is plagiarized from a West Wing episode where WGA writer, Aaron Sorkin had the President Bartlet character riff on the adage during a campaign speech.