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If you run a company that produces written entertainment, you either believe that writers have value, or you don't. If you do, the only decent thing to do is to recognize the legitimacy of paying writers a percentage — yes, a whole two-thirds of a penny — as long as the companies that own their work continue to derive income from it. What's not decent is to have spent valuable negotiating time floating a specious theory of big-picture bullcrap about how the residual system is ''antiquated'' without offering any alternative compensation in its place. (Since the producers abruptly dropped this idea, one has to wonder if it was ever raised as anything other than a thuggish scare/stalling tactic in the first place.)
Oddly, the same executives who speak with absolute authority about the horrifying injustice of paying residuals seem to turn into bewildered children, lost in a fogbound forest and helpless to see even two feet ahead, when they confront the other big issue: income from streaming video, new media, and the Internet. Writers, like everybody else with a brain and a computer, have figured out that this is where a large chunk of the future of movie and TV revenue resides, and they want a piece of it. To which the producers have essentially responded: What's this newfangled Interweb you're talking about? We don't know how it works! Are you sure there's a way we can make money from it? What a silly thing to even talk about! What next, flying cars?
Never mind that these same executives have, for years, vigorously pursued deals to put their content on the Internet, acquire websites, and sell advertising for both original and repurposed programming. (Why? To make money, in case anyone is unclear.) Suddenly, when the people who write that material ask for a share, they go all fuzzyheaded. One of AMPTP's demands has been a three-year period to study the economic viability of new media. You read that right: three years. If any studio honcho can keep a straight face while uttering the phrase ''three-year study,'' I'll fork over...at least two-thirds of a penny. What's the breakdown — one year to figure out the cash flow, one year to count the money, and one year to decide which lie to tell the writers?
The problem with this position is that writers deserve a share of revenue for material they help to create. Not a share only if the revenue is really, really a lot. A share, period. If it turns out that streaming video is a goldmine, then both sides will get a lot of money. If it turns out not to be, they'll get less. Corporations are fond of reminding their employees that they're all a ''family'' during tough times. But when families sit down to dinner, Dad doesn't get to say, ''I'm gonna eat until I decide I'm full, and then we'll see if there's anything left for the rest of you.'' The right of a writer to earn money from work that continues to generate revenue cannot be dependent on how comfy studio and network heads are with the fullness of their own coffers.
The producers' alliance disagrees. They've put their game faces on for a months-long strike that could devastate the economic lives not just of writers but of any workers whose jobs vanish when a lack of scripts shuts down the production that employs them. AMPTP's position is that it can outlast the writers, and it probably can. But why should people in the business of making and selling creative product evince such contempt for the people who make that product possible? Do these gentlemen, some of whom are active and vigorous fundraisers for the Democratic Party, know what the Democrats think of corporate fat cats that try to starve out unions? In this strike, management may yet get what it wants — but only by pursuing it with callousness, greed, and disdain for the people who create the work without which their companies wouldn't exist. It's hard to respect anyone who wants to win that way.
Whatever else happens, it's time for both sides to start talking again. Nikki Finke, who has covered the negotiations with more zeal and specificity than any major media outlet on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog, has recently suggested that the level of acrimony between the negotiators has never been higher. If it's true that the people on either side of the bargaining table are now so at odds that dialogue is impossible, then they should step away and be replaced with people whose interest is not in posturing or bullying, but in negotiating a fair settlement. And the first move ought to come from the producers: As always in a labor dispute, real negotiations begin only when management commits to the principle of treating its employees with respect and fairness. If the producers can't do that, then the future that the studios and networks pretend is too murky to discuss is going to become a lot clearer — and a lot uglier.
