Politics of Production

I found this video to be very informative in relation to the crisis current set before us. For those of you who watched the movie and didn't have a clue what the people in it were talking about, here's a heads up. Right now, there is a strike going on that has been orchestrated by the Writer's Guild of America. This event is HUGE. Virtually all of the major film and television industryis affected, as are you, the consumer of that television and films.With the writers for favorite shows like Heroes, Lost, Family Guy, NCIS, CSI: Miami, 24, Stargate Atlantis, The Big Bang Theory, and virtually every show and movie on air stalled in production this could have major implications for society as a whole.

People will be out of many jobs for possibly a very long period of time.

The economy of the nation's second largest city, Los Angeles (which relies on the entertainment industry to fuel it's growth and tax revenue) is in major trouble if the strike lasts much longer.

Popular programming may never come back on air.

Reality TV, which requires no writers will most likely replace many television shows.

The internet will most likely grow in popularity for meeting the entertainment needs of consumers.

This situation is a perfect example of the politics of production. Often we, as consumers, take for granted all of the people that put their time and effort into a show before it ever reaches us. Some statistics that I found were especially interesting about this whole crisis:

On average, for a show with 14-15 writers there will be anywhere between 120 and 200 people below them including everything from cameramen, to makeup, to dressing room attendants. These people are now out of a job.

While there is a tendency to believe that everyone in Hollywood is rich, that is far from the truth. Because of political reasons, a majority of the people working on an average Hollywood set are low-middle income earners who are now out of a job and not able to provide for their families.

Writers, who are essentially the ones who create the show and script all of the lines and such, only receive 4 cents on every average DVD cost, which is near 22 dollars. That means that on average, on every DVD that is sold, the writers will only receive 4 cents while the studio profits 2198 cents for a DVD that costs 60 cents to produce. They are asking for 8 cents.

Writers currently get a grand total of 0 cents whenever their shows are played online (while networks make major dollars from ad sales.

In short, while we take our entertainment for granted, consuming endless ammounts of it, there are a lot of politics involved; politics that can get very very messy at times. A scary reality is that while we see celebrities and almost anyone who works in Hollywood as giant, rich, and almost inhuman, Hollywood is made up of people, who have very real jobs, families, houses, cars, and lives. Because of the politics of production in the movie/TV industry, potentially hundreds of people will be out of jobs, lost families, cars, houses, and lives. This is the reality of Hollywood. Chew on that CNN. . .