{"id":12725,"date":"2023-05-02T22:39:17","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T22:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12725"},"modified":"2023-05-05T22:41:36","modified_gmt":"2023-05-05T22:41:36","slug":"tv-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/05\/02\/tv-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"TV Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Are TV Writers So Miserable?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

On the cusp of a potential strike, writers explain why no one is having much fun making television anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Michael Schulman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For people outside the industry, the woes of TV writers can elicit a boo-hoo response. But the economics of streaming have chipped away at what was previously a route to a middle-class life. Photograph by David McNew \/ Getty\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possibly the most famous telegram in Hollywood history was sent in 1925, when Herman J. Mankiewicz, the future co-writer of \u201cCitizen Kane<\/a>,\u201d urged his newsman friend Ben Hecht to move West and collect three hundred dollars a week from Paramount. \u201cThe three hundred is peanuts,\u201d Mankiewicz assured him. \u201cMillions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.\u201d The rise of the talkies, for which Hecht became a prolific scenarist, soon brought a wave of non-idiot writers to Los Angeles, to supply the snappy movie dialogue of the thirties\u2014a decade that, not incidentally, saw the rise of the Screen Writers Guild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers have always endured indignities in Hollywood. But, as long as there are millions to be grabbed, the trade-off has been bearable\u2014except when it isn\u2019t. The past month has brought the discontent of television writers to a boiling point. In mid-April, the Writers Guild of America (the modern successor to the Screen Writers Guild) voted to authorize a strike, with a decisive 97.85 per cent in favor. The guild\u2019s current contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires on May 1st; if the negotiations break down, it will be the W.G.A.\u2019s first strike since\u00a0late 2007 and early 2008<\/a>. At issue are minimum fees, royalties, staffing requirements, and even the use of artificial intelligence in script production\u2014but the over-all stakes, from the perspective of TV writers, feel seismic. \u201cThis is an existential fight for the future of the business of writing,\u201d Laura Jacqmin, whose credits include Epix\u2019s \u201cGet Shorty\u201d and Peacock\u2019s \u201cJoe vs. Carole,\u201d told me; like the other writers I spoke to, she had voted for the strike authorization. \u201cIf we do not dig in now, there will be nothing to fight for in three years.\u201d TV writers seem, on the whole, miserable. \u201cThe word I would use,\u201d Jacqmin said, \u201cis \u2018desperation.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at TNY<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker Why Are TV Writers So Miserable? On the cusp of a potential strike, writers explain why no one is having much fun making television anymore. By\u00a0Michael Schulman For people outside the industry, the woes of TV writers can elicit a boo-hoo response. But the economics of streaming have chipped away at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}