The WGA strike's winners and losers
THE BIG PICTURE / PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
THERE'S no real way to gauge who "won" the tumultuous 100-day-long writers strike that ended over the weekend, pending official ratification by Writers Guild membership. In Hollywood, as in politics and sports, today's unassailable predictions are tomorrow's blown calls.
If we really wanted to know whether the concessions the WGA has wrangled as part of the strike settlement were worth the pain and anguish of a three-month work stoppage, we'd have to revisit the deal in five years to see if the world rotated on its axis just the way we thought it would. The deal may transform the use of content on the Web, making writers rich and changing the entire power structure of Hollywood.
Or maybe it won't.
But for all those writers who question if it was worth three months of picketing and pencils down for a modest series of gains -- most important, achieving jurisdiction over new media work and doubling the old DVD residual rate for new media -- I'd suggest a quick look back at showbiz guild history. In 1960, after a lengthy strike, Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan won a pivotal residuals agreement, allowing actors to earn residuals for movies on network TV.
Instead of being ecstatic, much of the membership was unhappy because the residuals weren't retroactive but were only paid for films made after 1960. But the die was cast. Residuals spread far and wide. At first they expired after a relatively brief period of time. By the mid 1970s, SAG President Dennis Weaver was able to convince Lew Wasserman, then lord of the Hollywood universe, to make residuals a lifetime affair.
In other words, big triumphs begin as little victories.
Of course, when it comes to making judgment calls, in today's media universe we don't wait for the dust to settle. Instant analysis is demanded. So with that caveat in mind, let's look at some of the winners and losers of the writers strike.
Winners
* The WGA leadership: Whenever I spoke to studio chiefs, they heaped abuse on Patric Verrone and David Young, dismissing them as naive, hapless militants with no clue about how to negotiate a showbiz contract. All wrong. Despite some missteps along the way, the WGA leaders kept their fractious membership together, courted the powerful TV show runners, thrashed the studios in the PR wars and stayed cool under fire. For all the concessions they had to make, they got the guild perhaps the best deal it's had in decades. If that's not saying much, that's more a reflection on the perilous state of unions and Hollywood than on the WGA.
