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Striking It Rich
by Miriam Datskovsky
Feb 13 2008
Feb 13 2008
For some, the writers’ strike really paid off.
The Writers Guild strike didn’t just shake up Hollywood; it altered the landscape of presidential politics. Read More
deadlinehollywooddaily.com
Entertainment writer Nikki Finke says she saw her website, the online extension of the column she writes for LA Weekly, double its traffic during the strike to 800,000 page views a day, thanks to its strike coverage. Finke says she received multiple offers for the eight-month-old blog in that period. “Every striking writer I know was reading Nikki’s site almost obsessively, partly because she’s such a good reporter,” says Scott Kaufer, an executive producer of Boston Legal, “but also because Variety and the L.A. Times were considered pro-management and monumentally lazy.”
The National Football League
ESPN’s Monday Night Football has been cable’s top-rated program every week since the strike began on November 5. And NBC’s Sunday Night Football commanded the third-highest ad rates—$401,951 for a 30-second spot—behind the World Series and an NFL special. By comparison, the top-grossing reality show during the strike, Dancing With the Stars, garnered just $323,981 for a 30-second spot—some 20 percent less than the Sunday night gridiron.
Dubious Network Programming
In any other season, the abysmal reviews of Cashmere Mafia (ABC) and Chuck (NBC) would have ensured those shows never stood a chance. (Chuck took in just $79,504 for a 30-second commercial.) But this wasn’t any other season. This was the year Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick’s tepidly received Web series Quarterlife sauntered onto the screen—and the February when NBC ordered six episodes of Australia’s Kath & Kim without running it past studio execs and advertisers per standard pilot procedures.
Facebook
When not picketing, strikers filled their hours with social networking. Jonathan Groff, a writer on How I Met Your Mother, joined Facebook when a colleague used the site to ask Groff to see the colleague’s one-man show. Facebook says it doesn’t monitor or tally user changes within the entertainment industry (or any other). But new Facebook users include such producers as Malcolm in the Middle’s Jay Kogen, The War at Home’s Michael Hanel, and Reba’s Ari Posner. Groff says his agent’s hyperdetailed profile has come to resemble “the page of a 16-year-old girl in high school who’s failing her classes.”
The Writers
According to the terms of the settlement, writers are guaranteed fair compensation for work republished online by studios, as well as separate rights and fair compensation for original Web content. And many writers will keep the blogging gigs (The Simpsons vet Matt Selman is writing Time magazine’s Nerd World) and work from independent content providers (online-content producer Icebox, once a blip on the Web, was reeling in material from writers on Seinfeld, Futurama, and the Late Show) that they picked up during the strike. “Every TV writer has fantasies of creating a show with Yahoo or Google and owning the copyright and a big chunk of the upside and making billions of dollars,” says Peter Blake, a writer on House. “When they start making those deals, please have them call me.”
Entertainment writer Nikki Finke says she saw her website, the online extension of the column she writes for LA Weekly, double its traffic during the strike to 800,000 page views a day, thanks to its strike coverage. Finke says she received multiple offers for the eight-month-old blog in that period. “Every striking writer I know was reading Nikki’s site almost obsessively, partly because she’s such a good reporter,” says Scott Kaufer, an executive producer of Boston Legal, “but also because Variety and the L.A. Times were considered pro-management and monumentally lazy.”
The National Football League
ESPN’s Monday Night Football has been cable’s top-rated program every week since the strike began on November 5. And NBC’s Sunday Night Football commanded the third-highest ad rates—$401,951 for a 30-second spot—behind the World Series and an NFL special. By comparison, the top-grossing reality show during the strike, Dancing With the Stars, garnered just $323,981 for a 30-second spot—some 20 percent less than the Sunday night gridiron.
Dubious Network Programming
In any other season, the abysmal reviews of Cashmere Mafia (ABC) and Chuck (NBC) would have ensured those shows never stood a chance. (Chuck took in just $79,504 for a 30-second commercial.) But this wasn’t any other season. This was the year Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick’s tepidly received Web series Quarterlife sauntered onto the screen—and the February when NBC ordered six episodes of Australia’s Kath & Kim without running it past studio execs and advertisers per standard pilot procedures.
When not picketing, strikers filled their hours with social networking. Jonathan Groff, a writer on How I Met Your Mother, joined Facebook when a colleague used the site to ask Groff to see the colleague’s one-man show. Facebook says it doesn’t monitor or tally user changes within the entertainment industry (or any other). But new Facebook users include such producers as Malcolm in the Middle’s Jay Kogen, The War at Home’s Michael Hanel, and Reba’s Ari Posner. Groff says his agent’s hyperdetailed profile has come to resemble “the page of a 16-year-old girl in high school who’s failing her classes.”
The Writers
According to the terms of the settlement, writers are guaranteed fair compensation for work republished online by studios, as well as separate rights and fair compensation for original Web content. And many writers will keep the blogging gigs (The Simpsons vet Matt Selman is writing Time magazine’s Nerd World) and work from independent content providers (online-content producer Icebox, once a blip on the Web, was reeling in material from writers on Seinfeld, Futurama, and the Late Show) that they picked up during the strike. “Every TV writer has fantasies of creating a show with Yahoo or Google and owning the copyright and a big chunk of the upside and making billions of dollars,” says Peter Blake, a writer on House. “When they start making those deals, please have them call me.”
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