Insights · January 10th, 2008
The American Film Institute identified the writers’ strike as the most significant industry event of 2007. Posing questions about how an audience will “receive its storytelling in the years to come, and how creators will be paid for their work,†the Institute’s focus points up two compelling questions tied into the explosion of digital media: who’s creating the material, and how can professional wordsmiths remain competitive?
The quickly rising acceptance of user-generated platforms for creating media is bringing new storytellers into the fold. We have an increase in the numbers of people viewing video online, as well as those generating content. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported an increase from 33% in 2006 to almost 50% in 2007 among visitors to YouTube and other video sharing sites (at least one analyst suggests this uptick to be a direct result of the writers’ strike). The number of these sites continues to grow, as do the users who are creating the content they carry. The Long Tail is growing.
But for the professional bards of our age—those writers whose work we depend upon for their cogent insights, quick wits, and ability to sustain compelling narratives across the arc of a television season—the expanding digital technology poses a tremendous threat in the potential loss of residual payments, which make up a substantial portion of a writer’s salary. Many writers feel they got the short end of the stick when residuals were negotiated for DVD releases, and they want stronger protections out of the gate for Internet downloads. Producers maintain it’s too early to tell what this would look like, and propose a three year evaluation period.
Three years is a long time in the land of the Long Tail. We see the moment coming soon in music distribution when licensing replaces residuals, allowing the artist to draw income through usage fees instead of royalties. Whether this is practical or sustaining in the more resource intensive world of movie and television production is unclear. In the meantime, Steven Colbert’s debut this week as a “writer-less”writer (he, like other members of the Writers Guild, is barred from contributing writing to his own show), spoofed the dilemma to the extreme: without the writers, there was no Word.
Author: Amy Frazier is an arts-based consultant and speaker, and worked as Director of Programs and Marketing at Futurist.com. Learn more about bringing the wisdom of the arts into the workplace at Stages of Presence.com.
