There's an awful lot of misinformation out there about the WGA and its strike, starting with the belief by some that all TV and movie writers own several homes and luxury cars. Those are the exceptions, not the rules. Hey, if you want to see people who are rolling in cash, take a look at the ones who are now trying to deny us a share of the revenues when our work is run on the web.
But then it's one of the things we live with as creative folks. When Producers and studio execs do everything possible — ethical or not — to maximize their incomes…well, that's good, old-fashioned American business. But whenever we want a raise, there's someone out there complaining we're greedy. (Among the more surreal moments of my life: During the '88 strike, I was in a meeting where a man with my initials and an annual salary of 70+ million told us that "the business is hurting" and his studio could not possibly meet one of our demands which might have cost them six million dollars over three years. Did I mention this man's personal paycheck was over seventy million dollars a year?)
Some other bits of faulty info. I keep reading "The WGA does not represent writers of Animation, Reality Shows or Game Shows." Wrong. The WGA represents quite a number of writers in all three of those areas. What it's seeking in the current negotiation is jurisdiction over all of them.
Also, there's "Animation Writers do not get residuals." This too is not true. Many do. As I've mentioned here before, some animation writing jobs are covered by the WGA, some are covered by The Animation Guild and some are covered by neither. When the WGA covers a show, it secures residuals in some form. The Animation Guild does not but even on some of those shows, writers have successfully negotiated residual deals…and of course, they're totally on their own when there's no union involved. It's not easy for an individual to make a residual deal but it has been done, and I'm a little tired of people talking like there's something about cartoon production that automatically makes it impossible to pay residuals.
One of the big myths is that so-called Reality Shows don't have writers. Of course, they do, even when the show is all about what "real" people do in spontaneous situations. In those cases, someone has usually engaged in the plotting to set up those situations. Someone else (or maybe that same someone) has written narration. On a game show, if the host reads questions, someone wrote those questions. Even if the host just welcomes you and explains the rules, someone wrote those words. On Deal or No Deal, Howie Mandel reads all the introductions and many of his other lines off a TelePrompter. Someone wrote the dialogue on that TelePrompter.
For the most part, "writerless" shows are shows that have writers but they give them titles like Segment Producer or Program Consultant and they write along with their own duties, usually for extremely rotten money. Eliminating this practice is one of the goals of the WGA.
Lastly before I hit the sack: A lot of people think that when the WGA goes on strike, writers stop writing. No. We just stop writing for the studios and shows that our Guild is striking against. A lot of us have other writing gigs — books, comic books, graphic novels, magazine articles, etc. I doubt William Goldman is hard-up for cash but if he is because he can't get a screenplay deal during the strike, he can go write his next novel. The strike will be a financial hardship for some writers but not for all of us. Good night, Internet.