The paradigm, she is a’changin’:
A report by MoffettNathanson found that the pay cable industry lost 762,000 subscribers in Q1 2017, the worst drop ever. To compare last year’s Q1 saw a mere 141,000 subscribers lost.
Analyst Craig Moffett said that the “Pay TV subscriber universe [shrank] at its worst ever annual rate of decline (-2.4%)” and there have been 6.5 million cord-cutter (and the new “cord-never” user who doesn’t install a Pay TV source at all) watchers since 2013.
A succinct and, overall, quite fair report on the negotiation process in the 2017 WGA-AMPTP contract negotiations from one of H’wood’s favorite trade mags:
The dam broke at about 10:30 p.m. on Monday night. With 90 minutes to go to the strike deadline, the WGA and major studios began to find their way to the compromises that had been elusive during the previous five days of contract negotiations.
LB’s NOTE: TVWriter™ has been getting a lot of email asking us – mostly in a more subtle way – what the big deal is about the result of the latest negotiation with the AMPTP and why are we, the members of the WGA, so thrilled about the result.
Good questions, for sure. And my good buddy Gerry Conway has some good answers, right here, right now (and also on his blog, where this short but perceptive reaction originally appeared just a few days ago):
Just got an email from the WGA negotiating committee, and for the first time since I became a member in 1978, I believe the Guild has achieved the impossible– we pushed back against the studios’ greed and intransigence without having to destroy or damage careers and livelihoods in the process.
From the officers’ and negotiators’ lips to our ears:
And why not?
Lots of Writers Guild of America, West and East, doings recently, as y’all may have noticed, so we’re devoting this whole day to GuildAc, as the fannish world might call Guild Activity – and, now that we think about it, why shouldn’t the WGAs have fans? Start as a fan, donate time and love to your Guild, move on up to pro ranks–
But we digress. Time for the posts. For the latest on what’s happening in the pro writing world, scroll on up. Why up? Because…interwebs, gang. Inter%#@!Webs.