by Ted Sherman

Created on: November 06, 2007

As in all labor disputes, there are two valid sides to the Writers' Guild vs TV producers controversy. The reasons for the labor unrest are complicated, and primarily based on the explosion of the internet, DVDs and other gimmicks that are threatening to overwhelm the traditional pay and profit structures of the industry, as well as employer-employee relationships. Fundamentally, it comes down to how much of the almost impossibly complicated profits pie is considered a fair slice for the writers.

From the writers' standpoint, they feel the studio bosses are making huge profits from both the basic income from TV programs, advertising and the additional money that comes in from reruns, foreign sales, internet pay sites and other sources, old and new, such as all those little hand-held gimmicks that serve as mini-computers and movie screens, as well as new profit sources for the producers.

The Guild has long had disputes with Hollywood over the way profits are doled out on movies and TV. Too often, in the past, producers have offered writers deals that involved small sums of up-front money, with the promise that if the films or TV programs made money, the writers would also have percentages of profits. However, the tradition of "creative bookkeeping" has become a nasty joke, because many blockbuster films and, later, TV shows, obviously made great profits. However, when the company books were cooked cleverly, the writers too often got little or nothing as the program or film's profits officially showed up as small or non-exisitent.

Therefore, the writers today suspect, with some good reason, that much of the peripheral income from all the TV reruns, DVDs and internet sources that should be shared between producers and writers is being denied them, and lost in creative bookkeeping. Of course, the producers deny this.

On the other hand, the producers are having enormous problems with piracy. There are children, adults, individuals and organizations throughout the world who are in the business of stealing Hollywood blind of newly-produced movies, music DVDs, TV shows, computer games and every other original product to come out of the US entertainment industry. Obviously, those who pay to produce their original work lose millions of dollars every day due to this outright thievery. Therefore, the producers say they are paying the writers everything possible, but still must take into consideration their ever-increasing costs and rising piracy.

As the current writers' contract

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