While listening to NPR this afternoon/early evening, they did a short segment on the writers strike that started early this morning. They had opposing clip quotes from Craig Mazin and Nick Counter, neither of which was spectacular or notable except for the part where Nick Counter made himself and the AMPTP look like retards. Counter said that "most of the writers that are successful will lose more in one week than they can ever gain from a strike."

In his head, it probably sounded like a good argument for not having a strike, after all, if those gains are so incredibly small, why shut down the entire industry and lose so much money for something so insignificant? And there you have it. The producers main guy for the last 20 years just said that the residual formula that writers want for new media (digital downloads) is so small that it's not worth a strike to get -- that it won't ever amount to a single weeks salary for a pro writer...

..and yet they still won't cough it up. Over the lifetime of a writer, these increases won't amount to a single weeks paycheck (so you shouldn't strike) but it's so huge and dangerous that it will damn near bankrupt the industry and giving it to writers is completely out of the question (but we can't give it to you.) It can't possibly be more clear what's going on here.

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