Democracy for Vancouver

I watch less than an hour of t.v. a week, and even that is just my Recommended Daily Allowance of the Daily Show via the internets. But the networks’ stance on the writers’ contract still pisses me off beyond even the pain of losing real-time Jon Stewart.

United Hollywood has a campaign going to send pencils (symbolic of striking writers laying down their tools) to the six major media moguls involved; you can write the bastards yourselves, or, if you’re too busy/lazy to put pencil to paper on your own, Pencils2MediaMoguls will send pencils to all 6 poobahs under your name for just a buck.

My letter:

Dear Les/Jeff/Rupert/Jeff/Bob/Sumner:

If I have to spend one more evening flipping through the channels, finding nothing but reruns and unerringly crass/cringe-worthy reality programming, I may give my t.v. to St. Vincent de Paul.

The writers are all that stands between us and the Roman circuses. They deserve your respect – and a cut of the take.

Digital media is a couple of decades old now – claiming it’s new and untested is patently mendacious. The producers deserve the lions’ share of the profits, because they take the financial risks. But the writers deserve a cut, whether it’s a first broadcast or a syndicated broadcast or VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray or streaming video over the internet. It’s all the same product: entertainment, born in the minds of the writers.

Today, we learned that bonuses on Wall Street for the five largest investment banks will be around $38 billion this year with the average payout to 186,000 investment banking community averaging $201,000. Merrill Lynch will pay out $9 billion. These five banks have collectively lost at least $10 billion in the subprime mortgage landslide.

Americans are frankly tired of the top 2% rewarding itself while hitting up the taxpayers for bailouts or screwing their investors or denying hard-earned royalties to the writers who allow us some respite from our paycheck-to-paycheck lives. Soon, and especially if we are overwhelmed with re-runs and the emetic of reality t.v. once too often, we may all decide that our families, our computers, our pets and even our laundry are more entertaining than the swill the networks see fit to pour into the communal trough in the absence of the real talent: the men and women who write the scripts.

Can the networks really afford to lose more market share at this point? Why not save all your very valuable noses, leave the spiting and smiting for another day, and give the writers their very slim, and well-deserved, piece of the pie.

Respectfully,
slim

Here are the tyrants’ addresses; do with them as you will:

Leslie Moonves, President, CEO
CBS Corporation
51 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019
www.cbscorporation.com

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO
General Electric (NBC/Universal)
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608
www.nbcuni.com

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, CEO
News Corporation (Fox)
1211 Avenue of the Americas
8th floor
New York, NY 10036
www.newscorp.com

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, President, COO
Time Warner Inc. (Warner Brothers)
1 Time Warner Center
New York, NY 10019
www.timewarner.com

Robert Iger, President, CEO
Walt Disney< Company
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
corporate.disney.go.com

Sumner Redstone, Chairman
Viacom
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
www.viacom.com