Category: News

Writers Guild East Wants to Unionize the Web?

wga-east-logoby TVWriter™ Press Service

Whaddaya know? Somebody with some deep pockets and a lot of strength thinks writers toiling away at Big Deal Corporate Websites should get paid. (This doesn’t include TVWriter™, which definitely is a very little deal, decidedly not corporate website – which means “Hey, y’all, you’re welcome to work with us for free any time.”)

Anyway, last week the editorial staff over at Big Deal Salon Media announced it wants to unionize via the WGA East. Here’s how they put it:

Every single one of the editorial employees at Salon supports unionizing with the Writers Guild of America, East, and today we’re asking the management of Salon to recognize our union…We are doing this because we believe in our publication and want it to be successful. We’re especially proud to work for a media organization that has championed progressive values for nearly twenty years. We believe this organizing campaign is a positive and public way for us to put those values into practice, right here at home. In the wake of the Gawker staff’s vote to organize with the WGAE, we see an opportunity to help establish standards and practices in Internet journalism. It’s an exciting moment for our field, and we want Salon to be at the forefront of change. read article

How ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ Got a Gig Writing for SILICON VALLEY

You’ve all heard about interweb phenom “Fake Steve Jobs,” right?  The blog by that name was a sensation, attracting so much attention that even interweb-shy TV execs noticed. Which brings us to this tale of how the site’s creator, Dan Lyons, has made a new life for himself – under his own name, this time:

Dan Lyons - who isn't a character on HBO's SILICON VALLEY - yet
Dan Lyons – who isn’t a character on HBO’s SILICON VALLEY – yet

Interview by Kwame Opam

Dan Lyons’ career has taken him strange places, from covering IBM to working with Mike Judge on HBO. Remember Fake Steve Jobs? During his time as Forbes tech editor, Lyons created The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs in 2006, pretty much just as a way of understanding how to blog. It was funny and insightful, and it got people to pay attention. Pretty soon the site was earning 1.5 million visitors a month.

To this day, the site remains one of Lyons’ best-known achievements. He’s since written for places like Valleywag and ReadWrite, and is a minor celebrity in the bubble that is tech media. It even landed him a writing gig on Silicon Valley, whose second season finale airs on Sunday. Lyons insists the whole thing was just a crazy accident, though — yet another happy circumstance in a life spent just trying things out. read article

Think You’re Not Being Paid Enough for Your Writing?

Obviously not a BBC writer
Obviously not a BBC writer

by Team TVWriter™ Press Service

Don’t despair, chum, because you’re in good company. The Writers Guild of Great Britain recently revealed that members have reported that the pay they receive under various BBC “shadow scheme” guidelines is the equivalent of about $3 to $4 1/2 an hour…and we’re talking about big time pros walking on EASTENDERS, HOLBY CITY, CASUALTY, and other long running BBC shows.

Turns out that even with agents and credits up the wazoo, writers still end up with a total fee of a thousand pounds ($1527.65) for writing as many as three drafts of a script stretched out over a period of more than three months.  And, according to the WGGB, there’s no guarantee of an assignment during all that time. That’s right, frustrated newbies of the U.S., these poor Brits are busting their chops on spec.

The BBC has, of course, responded because it has lots of salaried employees making – we reckon – a bit or two more than $3/hour who have little else to do. Here’s how an unidentified spokesman put it: read article

LB: Epix is Doing a Series Starring Nick Nolte

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 24: Actor Nick Nolte from "A Walk in the Woods" poses for a portrait at the Village at the Lift Presented by McDonald's McCafe during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2015 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)
Now here’s a guy I could have a drink or 10 with, “ex-POTUS” or not

by Larry Brody

…And even though I’m almost clueless about what Epix is – except that they’re a “premium cable network” and seem to do a lot of streaming over the web – I absolutely would watch (as in try out) their upcoming series GRAVES, starring Nick Nolte “as a former President of the United States…who twenty years after his term ends…begins to think that his policies have damaged the country…[and] goes on a Don Quixote-like journey to fix things.”

Oh, and it’s a single camera, half-hour comedy, in case you couldn’t tell from my abridged longline…not that I could tell from their longer, tedious logline the Hollywood Reporter ran a few days ago.

The creator-showrunner is Joshua Michael Stern, who wrote something I haven’t seen called SWING VOTE, and Oscar winning producer of THE HURT LOCKER (which I thought was naive in its “gritty reality”) Greg Shapiro is also on board as an executive producer. For all I know, these two men are the funniest, most creative individuals on the planet, but I’ve got to be candid here. I’d rush to watch this thing even if it was from the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND gang because Nick Nolte being Don Quixote? C’mon! read article

NBC Taking Netflix Trail with New Series AQUARIUS

By which we mean that the network will be making the show’s entire season available online after it premieres.

Do they love it? Or is this newest showbiz paradigm the TV equivalent of dumping a bad film by sending it straight to video?

acquariusnbc

by Nellie Andreeva

NBC is looking to further blur the linear-digital divide by releasing all 13 episodes of its new David Duchovny series Aquarius on NBC.com and the NBC app after the show’s two-hour linear network premiere on May 28. The entire series also will be offered to all other VOD platforms at that time. read article