Category: media

“According to this theory, the writers strike seems likely to last a long time, pushing studios to grab promising material that’s ready to go. Some even speculate that the demand could be a boon to the foreign-film market as buyers look for inexpensive movies of quality.”

“Public-relations tactics and labor action in such a high-profile industry could conceivably be a combustible mixture. Both sides are aware that a popular strike may have long-term political repercussions for producers in the event Congress takes up related issues such as technology or residuals.”

“Technology is usually seen as Blockbuster Inc.’s enemy. Why would anyone drive to a store when they can order online and have movies mailed to their home or transmitted straight to their television set by video on demand?”

“MTV Arabia, which launched over the weekend, will feature 60 percent international music and 40 percent Arabic music, along with local adaptations of the channel’s popular non-music shows.”

Perhaps not since the air traffic controllers’ strike of 1981 has the big press lavished such intense and generally sympathetic coverage on a labor dispute.

In the first big-screen casualty of the Hollywood writers strike, Columbia Pictures said on Friday it had postponed production on “Angels & Demons,” a prequel to its box-office hit “The Da Vinci Code” starring Tom Hanks.

“NBC has announced it will air the internet series Quarterlife on television, marking what is believed to be the first time a program originating online is broadcast on a major American network.”

The striking TV writers are taking full advantage of the online resources available to them, putting creative and sometimes hilarious videos explaining their position on YouTube and other sites. “It’s very interesting to see how the writers have used that entity that doesn’t pay them – the Internet – to do an end run around the very media firms they work for. It’s certainly a nice bit of irony.”

“With the strike deep into Week 2, thousands of union writers are unemployed until further notice, and dozens of assistants, food stylists, electricians, makeup artists, landscapers and thousands of other ‘below the line’ workers in the industry are finding that their work is drying up, too, punching a psychic wound through large swaths of Los Angeles.”

“Union leaflets distributed at the Disney site stated that the company has projected $1.5 billion in digital revenue, and suggest that the writers’ share of that is zero. Disney immediately rejected those claims.”