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Bill Maher's Take on the WGA Strike

published by Zifnab

5 months 2 weeks ago • 872 views

tags: bill maher, real time, wga, strike, writers, hbo

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Bill Maher gives his thoughts on the WGA writers strike during "Real Time With Bill Maher" (January 11, 2008) on HBO.

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written by Zifnab

| 5 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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Re-queueing this video for one more try; last queued Monday, January 14th, 2008 4:50pm PST - requeue requested by submitter Zifnab.

written by siftbot

| 5 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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I sure hope they win.

written by dag

| 5 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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If those execs aren't complete morons, they'll cave for now at least. We all want our Lost dammit! I'd spot some cash right now to get things back on the air if it were so simple.

I recently heard a computer programmer comment on this strike, and he said he thought the execs ought eventually to try to seek the deal that software companies have with programmers, that is: You write the code we pay you to write, then we own it, period. Salary... or per instance, but no profit sharing. Once you wrote what we paid you to write, it is ours... Outside of the traditional "arts", that is the way that business works.

On the other hand perhaps the "new arts" (those being programing and game-making perhaps) ought to seek the deal Hollywood has. heh.

Which way do we want things to go? thoughts?

written by Doc_M

| 5 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Obviously there is no programmers' union... If there were then they would have a deal that pays them extra for successful products, Similar to the Hollywood deal. EVERY job needs a union. It is the only way for workers to get a fair deal.
-Karl

written by swedishfriend | 5 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Maher makes an excellent point -- a strike could lead to this bleak scenario:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-altschuler20dec20,0,6519302.story

What's different between this strike and the one 19 years ago is the studios' corporate financial backing: they can weather a strike much more comfortably than before so they could outlast the writers if they had to.

More to the point, what does everyone lose by letting the strike go on? I don't feel either side has adequately considered those consequences. Sickened by the excess of reality TV programming, will viewers finally break their addiction to network and cable TV? Will viewers instead turn to the internet as their preferred platform to view content? Will A-list writers abandon their studio jobs to write for a new internet TV network? The strike will have accelerated each these scenarios.

written by rosspruden