Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Life on strike

In The New York Times, Melena Ryzik speaks to American screenwriters about life on strike.
Career shifts may be more common in the coming weeks, as residual checks dwindle. Depending on many factors — including the length of the show and whether it is on cable or a network — payments can be lucrative for first-time reruns, but they decrease exponentially with each broadcast. Still, for people like Nina Bargiel, who wrote 17 episodes of the Disney hit “Lizzie McGuire” a few years ago but isn’t currently working in television, that money is much appreciated. “If they’re doing a marathon, and they play six of your shows, that’s $300,” she said. “I’m lucky if I make that in a week.”

1 comment:

  1. My own take on this was, "the writer's economy is a mosiac of paid work, past work, and speculative endeavour that tends to horrify most people used to the relative security of steady employment."

    You could have read it in my own blog, if I still had my link in the redesigned sidebar...

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.