La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for June 05, 2023

ow

Good l,alo!

I’m absolutely on the side of the writers, 100%, but,I don’t know why they just don’t settle with the writers right now. Whatever they want, the people will be overcharged to pay for this anyway, so pay them what they deserve, and let’s get back to their great work…

I find unions for artists a strange concept. Unions originated to protect people doing work where nearly anyone could do a comparable job. And I support those unions. But each artist has a unique vision and it is the value of that vision and the presentation there-of that determines the artists worth. Are the streaming shows that bland that writing for them is just a pedestrian job?

I am in sympathy to those striking writers, the big sticking point is ad revenue. With so many watching ad-free streaming channels like Netflix, Hulu, etc., there is much less ad revenue for writers. Like many (though I don’t pretend to be a labor expert), I expect the strike to be settled in late summer (around August or so) as the Fall season approaches. If only because of the other workers affected by the walkout, like film crews, caterers, etc. Writers are, like, the unsung heroes of our favorite shows and movies. But that’s just my opinion.

But everyone knows that writing, art and music are just hobbies. Gotta still have a day job! (jk…)

I’ll bet the showrunners were rubbing their hands in glee when ChatGPT was announced. “Finally, we don’t have to pay those greedy human writers for scripts we can just get for free from an AI.” That’ll last until about a month after they actually try to use any AI-generated scripts.

The ideal seems to be slavery. I wonder how close it’s going to get…