Writer's Strike Ends!

Ahhhh... this is such good news for tv lovers (like me!). I was getting so freaking sick of reality shows being the only new fare on the tube.

The Writer's Strike is over!! According to the AFL-CIO: "Television and movie writers ended a three-month strike with a new agreement that addresses their key demands: They get paid fairly for their work distributed over the Internet and other new media. The contract also prevents rollbacks to pensions and health care benfits. Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, and Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West, attribute the strike’s success to the writers’ “physical resolve, determination and perseverance.”"

That's awesome. In most strikes I'm apt to side with the workers, because they're the ones actually doing the work, and meeting their demands usually means little to the bottom line of the parent company in the long run. That's not always true (airlines are a good example), but even in such counter-cases the parent company likely needs to make peace with the fact that it has a labor-intensive cost base and it has to pay fairly if it wants to continue delivering quality services. And some businesses just aren't going to have high margins, by their nature.

But entertainment is not one of those counter-cases. Entertainment has huge margins (as well as colossal failures), and it's just asinine that the major production houses didn't want to share their non-traditional revenue sources with the very people who drive their business. Writers are the heart of it all, and they deserve to share in the massive wealth pulled down by the actors and management. And it looks like that's what they're getting, which is fantastic.

So... yay for the writers! I'm happy 30 Rock and Medium and Eureka and BSG and everything else I love to watch will be coming back. I know it'll be a little while before new eps are ready, but me and my tivo will be waiting, Hollywood! So get on it!!!