“Seven and a Half Cents Doesn’t Mean a…”
Hollywood writers, if I were you, I’d take the deal. The LA Times has some details on the contract the studios and networks offered to the Writers Guild of America yesterday. The contract would pay a fixed rate of $1,200 per year for one-hour shows streamed over the Internet during the first two years of the new contract. Then 2% residuals kick in. Some shows produced for the Internet would count. The story doesn’t say whether DVD rights were re-negotiated, but that probably means they weren’t.
Why take the deal? Two reasons:
There’s not much money in Internet video yet. It’s more valuable for promotion for the next two years. Jupiter estimates it’ll be worth less than $2 billion cumulatively, taking in a good portion of video advertising ($1.3B for 2007-2008), some chunk of display advertising, and consumer spending on online video ($400M for 2007-2008).
And this is true:
- “The reason for this strike was to make sure we had coverage of the Internet, that it didn’t become a guild-free zone, and I think we accomplished that,” said Warren Leight, executive producer of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.