The Cost of Residuals.
As the Writers Guild goes into it’s second week of strike, an article in the Los Angeles Times – ("Strike reveals a future feared" – by Patrick Goldstein – 11/13/07) –revealed a stunning reality of the way studios think about money. Studio executives interviewed during the last week said that they see "the future as too uncertain for us to give anything away". An argument with merits? – yes, the future, and profit, of "new media" is not entirely clear. However, two points – residuals are based on profit, whether it's so many cents per DVD sold or, as the Guild now want, so many cents per download of work that they created sold.
The second point is far more important and far – reaching. When Tom Freston, an executive at Viacom, was fired last year, presumably for doing an inadequate job, he was paid, upon being fired, $60 million dollars, which just happens to be more than all the residuals paid to all the writers in the Guild for all their work in the entire year. Please read the last sentence again if it's not clear....
So, while the future is too uncertain to give anything away to writers, it's sure as hell clear enough to give $60 million dollars to a fired studio executive. This is the Old Boy's (and to a limited extent Girl's) Club gone insane. And presumably this was budgeted for, negotiated, in Mr. Freston’s contract, and presumably all the other members of this Old Boys Club have similar contracts. Back scratching beyond any reason, logic or decency.
No one man, or woman, for doing a good job, for even as is sometimes said “coming in and turning a studio around”, which by the way needs writers to write good scripts, should be paid a “residual” larger than the entire Writers Guild. And in this case it was for being fired. There was obviously money to pay Mr. Freston, yet there’s no money to pay writers a cut of the profits in “new media”…….
This is beyond any reason, logic or decency at all.
As the Writers Guild goes into it’s second week of strike, an article in the Los Angeles Times – ("Strike reveals a future feared" – by Patrick Goldstein – 11/13/07) –revealed a stunning reality of the way studios think about money. Studio executives interviewed during the last week said that they see "the future as too uncertain for us to give anything away". An argument with merits? – yes, the future, and profit, of "new media" is not entirely clear. However, two points – residuals are based on profit, whether it's so many cents per DVD sold or, as the Guild now want, so many cents per download of work that they created sold.
The second point is far more important and far – reaching. When Tom Freston, an executive at Viacom, was fired last year, presumably for doing an inadequate job, he was paid, upon being fired, $60 million dollars, which just happens to be more than all the residuals paid to all the writers in the Guild for all their work in the entire year. Please read the last sentence again if it's not clear....
So, while the future is too uncertain to give anything away to writers, it's sure as hell clear enough to give $60 million dollars to a fired studio executive. This is the Old Boy's (and to a limited extent Girl's) Club gone insane. And presumably this was budgeted for, negotiated, in Mr. Freston’s contract, and presumably all the other members of this Old Boys Club have similar contracts. Back scratching beyond any reason, logic or decency.
No one man, or woman, for doing a good job, for even as is sometimes said “coming in and turning a studio around”, which by the way needs writers to write good scripts, should be paid a “residual” larger than the entire Writers Guild. And in this case it was for being fired. There was obviously money to pay Mr. Freston, yet there’s no money to pay writers a cut of the profits in “new media”…….
This is beyond any reason, logic or decency at all.
