The Wisdom Of The Commenters
Posted by: Jon Fine on February 20, 2008
When I’m coldish and kvetching and dizzy from decongestants, it’s nice that some smart commenters can stop by and make arguments better than I could make even if I weren’t totally coldish and kvetching and etc.
Accordingly: big, big thanks to commenter (and Writers' Guild member) Ben Schwartz, who ably smacks down Michael Wolff’s assertion regarding the writers’ strike—that the writer’s got “nothing”:
What Wolff doesn't seem to get is that the studios were offering NOTHING prior to the strike. NOTHING. The studios caved in only three months.
(snip)
What was in the minds of so many writers is the terrible 1988 deal on the vhs/dvd market, in which we underestimated the value of the new market and agreed to low initial rates until that market grea. Later, studios refused to adjust as it succeeded. 20 years on, it holds back writers to this day. It’s why writers jumped on this moment to get hold of the Internet, which they did in three months. That was the point of this strike, and we won it.
And a big hat-tip to commenter Detroit Media Guy, who in his comment on a previous post directed me to his account of his experiences with Google TV ads.
Let's just say that Detroit Media Guy's experience turned out to be slightly less positive than the one David Churbuck discussed (and that I linked to):
We have just spent almost $1 million dollars vetting the GoogleTV system to discover that it gives us absolutely no distinguishing proof of either commercial viewership, or viewing differences among individual Networks and dayparts.
Big thanks to both of you guys.
