What is entertainment worth?

Patrick Goldstein / Big Picture Column

THE writers strike negotiations disintegrated again last week, with an allegedly "groundbreaking" proposal from the studios dismissed by writers as a massive rollback. With much of Hollywood grinding to a halt and widespread pessimism about how long a strike will last, everyone is asking why the two sides can't find common ground.

There's a simple answer, but it has nothing to do with what's going on -- or more accurately, not going on -- at the negotiating table. On the surface, the impasse revolves around how to divvy up future Internet media revenues. But the real problem is that nobody knows the value of anything anymore. Whether we're reading horror stories about the mortgage meltdown, watching the dollar plummet or gagging on the prices at our neighborhood gas station, we're all stumbling around with a nagging feeling that the value of things has become unmoored.

It's this sense of growing unease that has hovered like a black cloud over the strike negotiations. No one in Hollywood can agree on the value of entertainment.

"It's in the zeitgeist now -- we're at a moment in time where people don't how to value things," says Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "Art and media are a reflection of society. And if you no longer have an internal sense of what the dollar or a tank of gas is worth, it's no surprise that you don't know what content on the Internet is worth either. It goes to the heart of why we're at an impasse with the Writers Guild. If no one has a clear understanding of what entertainment is worth, then no one really knows what they're negotiating about."

Read the rest of the column here.

More news on the strike

Comments

[Josh Pate]

Mr. Lynton makes a good point--no one is exactly sure how much things are the internet will be worth.

That is why the WGA is negotiating for a percentage instead of a set fee.

No one from the AMPTP has given any counterargument to this BASIC principal.

They can't because there isn't one. They are just trying to union bust and force us into a bad deal.

They won't.

WE WILL OUTLAST.

The studios will be shocked at how deep the well of writer's resolve is.

[JimBob]

This is a ballsy new wrinkle in horse-trading. Someone is trying to take a well-deserved slice of the pie, so the question becomes, "But really, do we know what this pie is? What is pie, after all? The concept of pie is currently in a state of flux, you know. I'd give you some of this pie but the whole concept of what constitutes pie is ust so ambiguous these days."

Give me a @#$&#@!!-ing break!

[JoannaWGA]

Yes, Josh. Most of us have to be hard-headed - or we'd have given up on making a living as a writer long before we were ever given our first break.

[JozieLee]

Whenever a book is sold the publisher gets paid, and the writer gets their cut until the property goes into the public domain, after 100 years, right. Can't WGA use a similar formula? It seems to me the writers of television programs should be paid at least 50% of whatever the producer receives until the property goes into public domain. Too simplictic?

[Cameron]

"No one in Hollywood can agree on the value of entertainment"? I'm sure that's news to the stock holders who have been told by the studios just how much money they are making and will continue to make from new media. The reason there is no deal yet is because the studios seems to lack an understanding of the worth of their writers. They know how much their raking in; they just don't want to share it.