I took two personal days and I come back to http://www.amptp.com which is a hilarious spoof of the AMPTP’s official site http://www.amptp.org. It looks almost identical, too, down to those Did You Know? factlets. (Example: Six out of 10 non-Judd Apatow movies never recoup their original investment… ”Writer” comes from the Latin ritem meaning “unhygienic and doughy.”) Many many people are being fooled judging from the ton of puzzled emails I’m receiving. This satirisite is laugh-out-loud funny no matter what side of the issue you’re on. I especially enjoy that the website creators make fun of the AMPTP’s crappy new campaign labeling the WGA negotiators as organizers (to imply “that we’re some kind of Commies,” one WGA board member told me over the weekend). Also, did you know that Nick Counter was the youngest member of the Backstreet Boys? Cares about dolphin safety? Has a younger brother Aaron Counter who’s head of the MPAA? A ton of work obviously went into it. This is what clearly happens when writers have way too much free time on their hands. Thank god for laughs in the middle of this tragic time. I look forward to the AMPTP pulling the same prank on the WGA. Oh wait, http://www.wga.com is already taken by the Western Growers Association.
Here are some excerpts from just the home page:
“We are heartbroken to report that despite our best efforts, including sending them a muffin basket, making them a mix CD, and standing outside their window with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel songs, our talks with the WGA have broken down. Quite frankly, we’re puzzled as to why this happened. We talked about it all the way home – after we walked into their hotel room, slapped our list of demands on the table and abruptly left the negotiating session – and none of us could figure out what went wrong.
… While the WGA’s members can clearly stage rallies, concerts and mock exorcisms, maintain unity in a large and diverse workforce, gain the support of a majority of the general public, prompt a sharp dip in our stock prices, derail half a dozen major movies and force us to refund advertisers’ money after they learn that they’ll be getting American Gladiators instead of Chuck, we question their ability to get things done. It is now absolutely clear that the WGA’s organazis are determined to advance their own personal ideologies, political agendas, sexual preferences, barbaric tribal customs, canine wardrobe choices, religious beliefs and blood rituals upon working writers and other working persons who depend on our work industry for their work.
…Their proposal for Internet compensation could doom the Internet media business before it ever gets started. (Projected start date: October 4, 2012.) We have already offered the writers a very generous $250 per episode for using their work on the Internet. Sure, $250 may not sound like much, but it adds up – a whole season of Heroes would cost NBC.com nearly $6,000! Who’s going to pay that money? Go look at at the Heroes web site – unless you count Nissan, Cisco, Sprint, and American Express, nobody’s willing to step up and advertise on such a risky and unproven medium. And who knows how much longer those fly-by-night operations will be around? (I mean, have you seen the Nissan Rogue? It looks like a Pontiac Aztek fucked a PT Cruiser, am I right?)
…In summary, the writers are demanding respect they haven’t earned, privileges they don’t deserve, and money for work they haven’t done. And those are perquisites we reserve solely for the severance packages of departing CEOs.
…The fact of the matter is, we’re going to win this thing. We’ve got enough material to wait out the strike. On the feature side, we’ve got great scripts ready to shoot. How do we know they’re great? Because they were already hits! Get ready for Talladega Nights starring Dane Cook! Wait until you see Titanic with Keira Knightley and Zac Efron! And on the TV side, we’ve got enough reality shows to choke a horse. Literally – one of the shows is Can You Choke This Horse? And for the fall, we’re already working on Can You Choke This Horse With the Stars? (Pepsi, you want a logo on the horse? Consider it done.)…”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.


OMFG !!!!! They didn’t buy the .com – Unreal !!!!
The thing is funny. It looks perfect. Read the FAQ’s – by far the funniest page. Fell out of my chair! OMFG is AMPTP a bunch of morons or what?
All this thing needs is a strike relief fund link and it will be the bomb – probably would raise a bit of money. Word will get out about this.
To “Fred”, the guy who said for writers to “cut the shit and negotiate”… we’re ready, willing and able to do just that. As soon as the AMPTP can take time away from their Christmas shopping to join us at the negotiating table. They walked away from the table in a giant hissy fit.
They’re not used to people who actually expect to negotiate with them. They expect to just give orders and be done with it.
Not. This. Time.
News item: Media Mogul goes to JAIL…
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN0937463420071211
Hollywood moguls, please read before bedtime.
Hollywood Union members, please call on Congress to investigate Big Media accounting practices.
Hot dang! That there was more brilliant (and informative!) than those god-awful “Speechless” videos.
Reputations will be made in this here strike.
Found under the “News” section:
“Nikki Finke”: You Expect Us to Believe That’s a Real Person’s Name?
Hahaha.
They didn’t buy the .com?! Ah hahahahah!
I will be happy of course when the strike is settled.
However, I’ll also be wistful that all this amazing and creative entertainment – the blogs, the speechless campaign, the AMPTP spoof site – will end, and we’ll have to go back to watching crappy sitcoms.
“Nikki Finke”: You expect us to think thats a real person’s name?
haha! geniuses.
now.
if only we could figure out how to get a paycheck out of it…
I checked the registration for amptp.com. The same owner has .net. Definitely not owned by AMPTP.org – they’re not sharing the same dns.
And apparently the AMPTP are so cheap they didn’t grab .biz, .info, or .us. And they didn’t grab .tv or .la
Obviously, they’re not investing much in their web development. Boneheads.
For what it’s worth, amptpsucks.com is available.
Fred, Ease up, old boy, it’s the holidays, we need a laugh.
Insider, it’s official, you’ve gone mad. Time to take a walk and step away from the cool-aid.
All comedy aside… The fact the spoof site exists where it does (AMPTP.com and AMPTP.net) tells us a lot about what we’re dealing with at the real AMPTP. They’re supposedly a group of entertainment professionals, yet so UN-savvy about the new technology the entire industry is moving toward using that they didn’t even think to spend $9.99 to secure AMPTP.com and AMPTP.net – leaving those URLs wide open to be used against them.
Ha, you couldn’t write this stuff!
Beautiful.
The AMPTP once again show all the guile, intelligence and brilliant tactical awareness of Dastardly and Muttley.
(And, toon-related, picture the poor Smithers who has to tell Nick Counter’s Mr Burns that they, um, forgot to register some domain names.
That’s after he explains the concept of domain names, of course. And the concept of the internet).
I agree with Fred. Satirizing something like the AMPTP is not much of a challenge, and that’s why it’s not that funny in the end. Also, given that LOTS of people will be out of work due to the collapse of negotiations over the holidays, this parody is a little immature; at least, let’s show it to a below-the-liner and see if he laughs.
Nikki, you’ve been great. Please, stick to the issues at hand. YouTube videos are one thing to give us a chortle, but this is more puerile.
Variety says this morning that Verrone was not present during the Friday negotiations. How is this possible? If so, where are his priorities.
I for one want the strike to end, and just hope and pray the WGA is focusing on the problems at hand; and not trying to win some ideological battle against corporate America while the middle class, as always, suffers.
To the people who designed that comedic website: How dare you make fun of our employer!
Sincerely, “Fred,” “Satire?,” “Chuck T.,” and “Dawn — a fan.”
“Satire?”–
Yep, Verrone wasn’t there on Friday — he was at a rally for workers who are trying to unionize. Then again, the media company CEOs also weren’t there on Friday. The negotiation was being handled — as it often has been — by David Young and the WGA’s negotiating committee, and by Nick Counter and the AMPTP’s phalanx of attorneys. (And, let’s face it, if Verrone *had* shown up, then the AMPTP’s post-Friday spin would’ve been that he was so petulant and irrational during negotiations, he derailed everything. As it stands, they reserved that treatment for David Young.)
BTW, what “ideological battle against corporate America” are you and the AMPTP referring to? I wasn’t aware that a request for 2.5% of digital-streaming revenues was tantamount to demanding that workers control the means of production. And if the Guild *is* waging an ideological battle, shouldn’t it be asking for a lot more than $8 million/year, per company?
Verb: organize ‘orgu`nIz
1. Create (as an entity)
– form, organise [Brit]
2. Cause to be structured or ordered or operating according to some principle or idea
– organise [Brit]
3. Plan and direct (a complex undertaking)
– mastermind, engineer, direct, organise [Brit], orchestrate
4. Bring order and organization to
“Can you help me organize my files?”
– organise [Brit], coordinate
5. Arrange by systematic planning and united effort
“organize a strike”
– organise [Brit], prepare, devise, get up, machinate
6. Form or join a union
AND!…(this posters addition)
7. To “Righteously Humiliate to a Degree of Extreme Prejudice”, any given fossilized, and decrepit conglomoration of power-hungry and greed-obsessed robber barons.
Followup to
Question:
If one is to believe the AMPTP’s negotiating stance, that they’re not making any money or they’re loosing money on “New Media”, shouldn’t the SEC be looking into what then must surely be false and misleading statements made to their shareholders? Some silly rule about corporate officers attempting to unduly influence or manipulate their stock’s price through lies or deceptive practices?
They not only grabbed the http://www.amptp.NET domain, it’s also up and running. It’s the same as the .COM.
Dear satire?
Give it a break. People protest in different ways. Creative writers protest in.. well.. creative writing ways. Hence the site.
To call their site puerile is silly. Would you call it puerile when the AMPTP takes out full page ads in major newspapers? Both sides are waging a PR battle, just through different levels of ingenuity.
As for why Verrone wasn’t present during the Friday negotiations. It might be that he’s the WGA president and not its negotiating committee.
It’s funny…but the WGA sending a link to this site out to members, in an e-mail with a subject line “update”…well, that doesn’t seem very savvy to me. A large part of the problem here is personality based. And, sorry to say, that now seems to apply to both sides. Before I get lambasted by members, let me point out I am a working screen- and television writer and this strike is very much a daily reality for me.
I would have hoped my Guild would take the high road. So while I laughed at the site, sending it to members seems childish to me. I understand emotions are hot, but let’s all refer back to the playbook. Lose your temper, lose your shit, lose your ability to negotiate.
I think it’s funny as hell, BUT I was disturbed to find it in my in-box last night as an official strike-related email sent to all of us members from the WGA. Those emails are supposed to be important strike updates. The fact that they would send out a link to a parody site making fun of the people with whom they are supposed to be attempting to make a deal is actually frightening to me. It’s NOT funny that thousands of people are out of work because of this. If our goal were to win a contest proving we write the best internet snark, sending this would be appropriate, but it isn’t. the goal is to get this strike over quickly and secure a fair deal.
Hmmm…sounds to me like Fred and “satire?” aren’t having withdrawal symptoms from lack of late-night TV. I don’t know about you guys, but to me, this site has Colbert Report writers written all over it (hence, the footnotes on the FAQ page, a la I Am America footnotes).
Peter Gwinn? Laura Krafft? Is that you?
Great find Nikki. Before anybody else questions who made the site, It was an United Hollywood production.
As for the speechless videos, they are supposed to be depicting a world without writers.
Better than satire, http://www.amptp.com shows what well-motivated writers can create on their own without network or studio interference — oops, I mean “development notes.” What we still need is solidarity — not just the WGA and the viewing public, but the WGA and the other guilds and unions (and even indidivual producers who are forced into the same lousy net profots boat) to bring the Sherman Anti-Trust Act down upon the media conglomerates. Remember that intellectual property is specifically protected by the U.S. Constitution in the form of copyright. It is not a product to be bought and sold like cars or shoes, as the AMPTP and their lackeys insist. Onward! P.S.: This little video will give a taste (language advisory): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9KcVFN7qlc
I am now officially against the WGA in this dispute. This has done it. I wasn’t against you, but now I am.
In the midst of all this you have the time and the gall to make fun of the people you’re leadership is supposed to be negotiating with?
What are you guys after? You want to gain jurisdiction without having those people who work in reality television and parts of the animation business sign cards granting the WGA rights of collective bargaining? You want to lift a no-strike clause– a clause that every other union in this industry has? You want “respect”? (“This battle would be about respect.” New York Times 12/10/07)
Shouldn’t it be about the money—the monetary compensation of the WGA’s current members? Shouldn’t that be the first order? Doesn’t the membership know you will not win these other issues?!
Go for the money and find your respect in that. You certainly won’t find it on sets anymore. Especially you television writers who have had the most immediate impact on the lives of crewmembers. (Some of you aren’t even very good writers.) Good luck finding respect when they look into your eyes upon your return. I think every one of us has a countdown calendar where we’ve figured out when we lose our house, car and/or apartment. And for most, that day is not too distant. (We’re so happy for you that the WGA’s strike fund has you folks covered.)
Your rallies and conversations amongst yourselves have led you to believe that you’re entirely in the right and you’re going to win and that everything will be great once the strike is resolved. If you don’t get your leadership to do what’s right for you now, but the time this is over there will be fewer jobs available for you. Reality television is VERY popular. Game shows are EXTREMELY profitable. Scripted television will be reduced markedly. So many of you who had jobs before the strike may find that was your last position in the business before you went off to work at Wal-Mart.
Get a clue, WGA members! Many of you don’t remember 1988. Those who do should have a little chat with the youngsters.
As for me and my band of crew and support business owners (without whom, by the way, your scripts are just words on a page), should this strike continue, we have a good chance of losing homes, marriages, families and friends. This is no time for jokes. This is a serious time that should have you all wondering about your guild leadership’s ability to end this to your best advantage.
Stop laughing at the underwear you’ve just strung up the flagpole and get your leadership to resolve this dispute!