The writers strike negotiations disintegrated again last week, with an allegedly "groundbreaking" proposal from the studios dismissed by writers as a massive rollback. With much of Hollywood grinding to a halt and widespread pessimism about how long a strike will last, everyone is asking why the two sides can't find common ground.
There's a simple answer, but it has nothing to do with what's going on -- or more accurately, not going on -- at the negotiating table. On the surface, the impasse revolves around how to divvy up future Internet media revenues. But the real problem is that nobody knows the value of anything anymore. Whether we're reading horror stories about the mortgage meltdown, watching the dollar plummet or gagging on the prices at our neighborhood gas station, we're all stumbling around with a nagging feeling that the value of things has become unmoored.
It's this sense of growing unease that has hovered like a black cloud over the strike negotiations. No one in Hollywood can agree on the value of entertainment.
"It's in the zeitgeist now -- we're at a moment in time where people don't how to value things," says Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "Art and media are a reflection of society. And if you no longer have an internal sense of what the dollar or a tank of gas is worth, it's no surprise that you don't know what content on the Internet is worth either. It goes to the heart of why we're at an impasse with the Writers Guild. If no one has a clear understanding of what entertainment is worth, then no one really knows what they're negotiating about."
Everywhere you look in today's culture, there's an uproar over the price structure for entertainment. That's particularly true when it comes to new media. For example, YouTube has driven media companies crazy by letting fans watch free clips from TV shows that studios hope to make huge profits from in various ancillary areas. Are those clips stopping us from watching the shows or are they making us fans of them? If you can't agree on that, you can't agree on their value.
There's a good reason why the WGA negotiations have foundered over Internet revenues. The Web is often described as a disruptive technology, but what it's really done is undermine a long-held consensus over the value of information and entertainment. "It started with downloading music, but now it involves all sorts of things," says TV writer-producer Marshall Herskovitz, co-creator of the Web series "Quarterlife." "People feel, 'If something is in my house, why should I pay for it? It's a private transaction between me and my computer.' People today have a real confusion over why some things are free on the Internet and others aren't."
