Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Couch Potato's Rejoice-- Writers Strike Over!

After 100 days of having to like, talk to their families, watch reruns or GASP! read books, lazy slobs all over the country wept openly at the cheering news.

Hollywood writers strike ends

The strike is over.

Hollywood's costly 100-day walkout came to a widely welcomed end Tuesday after members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to go back to work.

More than 90% of the 3,775 writers who cast ballots in Los Angeles and New York voted to immediately end the work stoppage, capping the entertainment industry's most contentious labor dispute in recent history.

snip
LA Times

Over 3 BILLION dollars in lost wages and revenue for the LA area, I heard on the radio this morning, that's a lot of cheese.
The last strike lost 500 million, not exactly chump change, but 3 billion?
There must be a whole bunch of television watchers in this country.
I am glad that people get to go back to work and make money. I am very glad that the Writers get a piece of the electronic pie, it is after all, their talent and product that is being disseminated.

Myself, I hardly watch the boob toob, most of the programming insults my intelligence and the news is a forgone conclusion.
The propaganda the government wants you to see and hear, followed by the local news that is deemed to be safe enough to hear, followed by a couple of fluff pieces, the weather and sports.
Oh, and then the weather again.
The weather here in the Pacific Northwest is more important than anything.
On the local channels it is not unusual to see the local forcast at least 3 times in a half hour.

God forbid there be some kind of storm, then it SATURATES the air time.
The 3 local channels that come to mind all have their very own LIVE, LOCAL, STORMTRACKERS!!! Eleventy eleven !!!! EXCLAMATION POINT!!!!
Pathetic and laughable.
So, happy viewing America, lap it up.
Dick Cheney approves.

2 comments:

  1. Battlestar Galactica was already in the can before the strike, as I understand it. In any case, there's less to watch every year. I mostly watch DVDs now when I want to see video.

    BTW, the New York Times article on this seemed to think that there was maybe $0.5M or so of lost wages. Who knows, really? The only thing for sure is that they went without pay for however long it was. How much real opportunity cost? That's the real question.

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  2. We took the opportunity to cancel our cable/satellite subscription...hadn't watched the damn thing in over a year, just used it for the SIRIUS music channels.

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