Writers Hit the Picket Lines

CNN.com, New York, 11.5.07

Get Ready for Reruns

NEW YORK (CNN) — Dozens of writers picketed Monday morning outside NBC studios at Rockefeller Plaza, carrying signs and yelling, on the first day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike against studios and production companies.

What do we want? a man called to the strikers.

Contracts! the group answered.

When do we want it?

Now!

The writers’ union says the strike, which began at 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET), is necessary to protect their members’ future incomes as the shows they write are increasingly distributed over new media, primarily through Internet downloading. A last-day effort to reach a new work agreement collapsed Sunday night despite the writers conceding a demand for a doubling of how much they are paid for DVD sales. This had been considered the major stumbling block to a deal.

The DVD situation has always been a catastrophe, Warren Leight, the executive producer of NBC’s Law and Order: Criminal Intent, said Monday. But, he stressed, At the moment, we have no piece of the Internet at all. Full article.