The Keystone Species
Kathleen Bolton on Nov 05 2007 | Filed under: Business
Ev
er heard of a keystone species?
A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionate effect on its environment relative to its abundance, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and help in determine the types and numbers of various others species in a community.
Such an organism plays a role in its ecosystem that is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone feels the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity.
Folks are beginning to wake up to the fact that that’s what writers are in the entertainment industry. Without writers, long considered the lowliest of the white-collar workers in Hollywood, the whole system collapses. West Coast Writers Guild, which is the union for television and screenplay writers, calls for writers to strike today.
The results will reverberate far and wide:
Around Los Angeles County, where about 254,000 people work in the entertainment industry, agencies and production companies are already considering layoffs and cost-cutting to cope with the anticipated slowdown.
Matters as far afield as Oscar promotions will be touched. “It definitely affects campaigns,” said Amanda Lundberg, a partner with the New York-based publicity firm 42 West, noting that film publicists rely on the likes of Jay Leno and David Letterman to promote their wares.
Similarly, thousands of businesses, whether mom-and-pop companies that train dogs for television shows or lumberyards that specialize in building materials for sets, face consequences. “I’m really scared,” said Oren Ashkenazi, owner of TVC Television and Cinema Wardrobe Cleaners, near the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, Calif. The cleaner processes up to 2,000 garments each night for television programs like “24.”
It’s sad that it had to come to this.
United Hollywood is a great blog that outlines the writers’ arguments clearly and without b.s. (Naturally. Because they are….writers). The perception is that writers in the entertainment industry are raking in the big bucks. Not so:
The reality is NONE of this is true. What is true is that the average Guild member makes 5K per year from his or her writing services, the average Guild member is middle class, and the average Guild member has been financially taken advantage of for the past two decades to the point of embarrassment.
The other big reality is that the future of ALL film and television is INTERNET bound, a paid advertising medium for which each and every Guild member currently has ZERO financial participation. With entertainment industry executives and studios raking in exponential profits every year and hiding much of those profits through creative accounting and fuzzy math, it is ESSENTIAL that, as members of the WGA, we stand up for what is only reasonable and just. The studios have forced us into this position through their greed and hubris. The attitude at the executive level often is that these movies and TV shows write themselves when in reality the obscene profits they are making always start with us, the writers.
It’s unclear whether the outcome of this strike will have implications for writers in other mediums. But the WCWG strike should be followed closely by all who make a living with the pen, or ah, keyboard.
UPDATE: Joss Whedon weighs in.
Kathleen Bolton
Therese Walsh
Ann Aguirre
Porter Anderson
Brunonia Barry
Carleen Brice
Sarah Callender
Keith Cronin
Anna Elliott
Jane Friedman
Robin LaFevers
Donald Maass
Juliet Marillier
Sophie Masson
Jael McHenry
Jan O'Hara
Debbie Ohi
Barbara O'Neal
Crystal Patriarche
Ray Rhamey
M.J. Rose
Chuck Sambuchino
John Vorhaus
Yuvi Zalkow
Sharon Bially
Anne Greenwood Brown
Tracy Hahn-Burkett
Suzannah Windsor Freeman
Kristan Hoffman
Jeanne Kisacky
Erika Robuck
Lydia Sharp
Frank on 
I’m glad they’re on strike – maybe now they’ll get the respect they deserve!
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this strike will be an interesting process. thanks, wu, for the analysis.
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I’d be curious to find out how much a showrunner gets in contrast to the regular writers, and how that differs from any other industry.
I know in games, the person who owns the I.P. gets the most money. I’d assume the same is true for TV – with the showrunner getting the lion’s share — if they’re smart and don’t give the thing away to a network for free.
The lesson being, if you want money, go create I.P..
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I think the biggest revelation for me is how little respected writers are in an industry that can’t function without them.
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I think they’re respected more in TV than in film.
I was looking at the terms that were put up by the WG… they want 40% of all DVD sales. That’s huge.
I hope this doesn’t have a roundabout effect of just inspiring the networks to be more ruthless. I think it will. They’ll just cancel more shows that don’t meet expectations, which will mean less jobs for writers in general.
I expect a lot of pain to come from this, even if the writers get everything they want. It’s going to hurt the industry really bad either way.
I hope 40% is worth a hostile climate and fewer jobs. Be careful what you wish for!
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Think about it like this… let’s use a simple example. A company pays its base employees $5 an hour. It can afford a maximum of $25/hour total for workers, as alotted by the budget requirements necessary to be profitable and stay in business.
So the company hires 5 workers, at $5 an hour. $25 – meeting the budget.
Now let’s say a union comes and says, “No, you must pay all workers at least $10 an hour.” Let’s pretend the company actually agrees to this. They’re now paying $50/hour for the 5 employees, which is twice their alotted budget. They can’t do that, and remain profitable indefinitely. What’s the obvious answer?
If the employees now make $10/hour, then the company can only afford 2.5 employees. Obviously you can’t have a half employee, so round it down to two.
You now have 2 employees instead of 5, because the 2 employees are making $10/hour for a total of $20/hour. Maybe the company could hire an intern, or part timer for the extra $5 because technically they’re under budget. 2.5 people instead of 5 = half the jobs.
Those two employees may be happy to be getting double their wage, but what if that also means double the work? Now working conditions may actually be worse, rather than better. But reality is actually more ridiculous than this simple example. I doubt the union would even allow the company to scale back to just two workers. It wouldn’t allow two unionized workers to be let go in order to meet a budget. Unions don’t operate by economics. Unfortunately, business does.
If the union forced the company to retain the additional 3 employees, then the company is forced to pay $50/hour for employees whether they can afford it or not. This means they’ll try to cut costs on the product itself, reducing budgets for materials or resources needed to create the product. This means the employees would have less to work with in order to make a good product. And if they can’t make a product that sells, then the company will go out of business. Or… the company will just shut down that particular product line and stick with only the ones that are the absolutely most profitable as to support very high wages and extra workers.
Not only does it mean less jobs, but less quality products, and fewer of them.
It’s all just simple economics.
I know if networks get backed into a corner, and have to pay, they’re just going to sign fewer shows, cancel more shows, and be more strict about the projects and people they take on. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, it’s crucial for you to ask yourself; Is it worth it?
If yes, be prepared to face the inevitable consequences; Higher paid writers, but fewer projects, smaller writing teams, and more cancelled shows.
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I don’t know where you get your 40% figure, but currently, under the deal that was brokered in the 80s, writers only get 5 cents — that’s right CENTS — for every DVD sold. Considering the average cost of a DVD is around $12-$15, that’s 0.41% to 0.33% of the total.
Writers get a big fat ZERO of all money a producer or network earns by streaming their content online. You know those free shows you can see on ABC, the ones rebroadcast from the night before that you have to click on an ad to get through? The network makes all the money from those ads. NONE of it goes to the creators and writers.
The WGA, which was asking for more money on DVD sales (a business that has changed dramatically since the 80s with the advent of TV on DVD and Netflix), pulled DVDs off the table as a sticking point in favor of trying to get their writers 1.2% of license fees on shows that are streamed online. But AMPTAS won’t budge.
As for a hostile climate and fewer jobs and making the networks more ruthless… they’re pretty ruthless as it is. There’s a reason for the shark-like reputation.
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One network should offer good royalties and then get the best writers for it, and the others will follow suit.
I guess the problem is in convincing one of them to do it.
What happened to good old fashioned competition?
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Oh, and I’ve got to stop reading blogs on the topic because most of them have inaccurate info. The 20% – 40% thing came from someone following the issue. I thought 20% already sounded high, which made me balk at the concept of 40%.
Ugh… misinformation. Sometimes I hate blogs. :)
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No matter what happens, how this strike resolves will impact artists other than writers…I’m thinking about songwriters, musicians, and a host of other industry professionals.
FYI, I put a link to Joss Whedon’s take on the strike (in UPDATE). It’s pretty good.
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Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily is also great for updated info. Check it HERE.
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