As Hollywood's writers go on strike, expect more reality TV, game shows and reruns.

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Since the release of TiVo and the release of the DVR, my broadcast TV viewing time has dropped to zero. With more and more TV series being released on DVD, or available on the internet, there is absolutely no reason for me to see it in real-time (I should add that I don't bother to keep up with sports -- for such things, I realize that broadcast TV is necessary). Right now, there are only two shows that I presently watch weekly: Heroes and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I'll catch episodes of Chuck, and The Office occasionally when I need to run something in the background, but for the most part, it is primarily DVDs and movies that I watch these days. Partially this is because I don't have time to go to the movie theaters that often, and DVDs allow me to watch my movie on my own time. With all of this being said, how important is it that there is a Hollywood Writer's strike going on right now?


Pretty damn important.


What the Writer's Guild is fighting for now are royalties over the sale of DVDs and internet broadcast/download rights. In the pre-internet era, writers got coin every time a tv station aired their TV show. The show was paid for by advertising during the commercial breaks on the tv show. With the rise of internet broadband, media outlets started putting up ways to view their TV shows online (last year for instance, I kept up with Heroes by watching the episodes off NBC's website). Even though NBC is placing advertising across these episodes, supposedly the cost goes in paying for bandwidth, and not lining NBC's pockets with cash. After all, NBC only made 15 million from the iTunes store last year. With the release of shows on DVDs, TV networks have figured out there's more money to be made in milking the consumer for dollars by releasing DVDs rather than try and sell the show as a syndicated program (also, take into consideration that syndication requires enough episodes and success that there needs to be a minimum of 65 for daily weekday broadcast, and 22 for weekly broadcast). When programs are syndicated, writers get paid royalties, but when shows are released to DVD or direct download writers aren't paid (unless they negotiated something individually).


The end result of guilds and unions is that they serve as a bargaining collective to protect the members of the organization from unfair treatment by businesses. NBC, if you didn't know, is owned by GE, and GE announced their earnings about a month ago. GE reported a 14 percent increase in net income the third quarter, while NBC's increase for the quarter was a 9 percent jump in profits, taking in $589 million this past quarter -- NBC has had 4 straight quarters of profits, taking in a total of 2.2 billion dollars so far in 2007.


NBC, if you haven't noticed, has been quietly sabotaging their own online website to fuel their Hulu startup. While NBC has been bold enough to call the $15 million from iTunes "pennies", one should also notice that no other media company with a partnership to iTunes has announced their iTunes earnings, or been stupid enough to ask Apple for a piece of iPod hardware sales, one wonders if NBC also asked electronics manufacturers for each radio and TV they sold.


I don't think this strike will be resolved quickly -- and in the meantime, expect to see mid-season replacements and re-runs filling in airtime as the strike goes on.

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