Viacom owns many of the companies that are represented by the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade group that took such a hard line against the Writers Guild of America this fall that a strike has been called beginning Monday, after which no new writing will be done until a new contract is signed. While browsing around this morning on the light weekend news, I found a post on Defamer pointing to something in Variety where Viacom is bragging about its awesome financial earnings this year and how it is just rolling in the money.

Viacom crows about the "phenomenal success" of "new global brand Transformers" that helped lift their net income by 80 percent, forgetting to transfer the revenues to a balance-sheet loss column and publicly lament that "there's no money to be made in this dying business of ours."

According to Wikipedia, Viacom owns the following companies: Paramount, DreamWorks, Republic Pictures, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies, Go Fish Pictures, Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike TV, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick Jr., MTV, VH1, MTV2, CMT, and something called MHD. Net income for 2005 was $1.25 billion on revenue of nearly $10 billion.

But they can't afford to double DVD residuals from $0.04 per disc to $0.08 for writers. No, that would cost too much, put all of their jobs at risk, and ruin the entire industry. Thanks Defamer.

<< Previous entry

Next entry >>