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It can all be summed up in one word... jealousy.

Sounds jealous.

Ok, how long can Eisner go before he shoots himself in the foot?
...
...
...
That long.

What a tool...

Hahaha! Someone's bitter. :o

To hear the term "stupid" come from the mouth of a CEO seems disconnected. One would think that people in that position would be more erudite and use tactful terms which more times than none can be more incisive. Seeing that I am light years away from ever attaining CEO status i can comfortably say that Eisner continues to be a spoled "cafone"

Butt Wipe...

He's partly right. At this point, these corporations getting involved in video are just pumping money out to see what sticks. In essence, they're not making money, mostly breaking even. For the guild to go out and seek a % of paltry profits, considering what the profits COULD be in the future, they might be shooting themselves in the foot. He's basically saying the guild is fighting for table scraps at this point when they should wait for when everyone is eating steak.

If the guild strikes a bad deal at this point, not knowing how the market will truly develop down the road, they've got no one to blame but themselves.

As for Apple and Steve Jobs being the problem, the studios don't have to say yes. That's a lame excuse and a cop-out. Apple makes no bones about the fact they are in business to sell hardware, life-style hardware. It just so happens Apple is where the market is currently at, like it or not.

Maybe the writers should be on strike for a cut of the sales of every Zune instead.

What does Steve's choice of diet have to do with Eisner's racist comment?

LOL! He called Jobs a Shiite Muslim?

I must have missed that one.

art,

It's a joke. What are you, stupid?

(That was a joke, too.)

hold on...yes, they are striking for a share of digital sales, etc. But they are also striking for better sharing of revenue on DVD sales - which are quite profitable.
I think they probably felt that they waited too long on the DVD stuff and want to get ahead of the curve on digital.

i thought the fault of everything belonged to george bush....

Checked Vuguru and Prom Queen. It seems interesting, but you have to pay for it, and it's windows only. And he wonders why it has made no money? THe answer is simple. People will not pay for a TV show that they do not know. TV has had it correct for decades. Give the show to viewers for free and have advertisers pay for it.

Michael who? Didn't he used to be somebody?

This is way the industry is broken.
All the content generators what to control and suck all the money out of the retail channel. When Tower was the largest retailer, what did the industry do they sucked all the profits out of Tower by underselling to Wal-mart and BestBuy. When the Online Music retailer CDNow was the most profitable and largest online media retailer, the industry killed it buy underselling to Amazon.com.
iTunes is the largest Digital Retailer what do they want to do kill their fastest growing retailer by underselling to Amazon.com and anyone else that might have a chance to compete.

The Media Companies are the only companies that will kill a golden egg laying goose just because they thing that the goose has more control of the golden eggs then it does.

They all need to get a grip and some brains and start supporting their digital retailers even the largest one. After all the Zune (or anyone else) is not going to slow the purchases on iPods any time soon.

@craig Isbell

As the Guild members how they feel about the small piece of the pie they got on DVD sales during the last writers strike. They settled for a piddly sliver of the profits, because the DVD market was in its infancy at the time -- roughly where the "New Media" market is today. The WGA knows better than to repeat that mistake on internet profit sharing today.

As for Eisner's "Jobs is the devil" thing -- it's clumsy misdirection of the most obvious kind. This guy gets more like Emperor Palpatine every time I see him. I predict that inside of a week, he'll have lightning bolts shooting out of his hands...

Eisner's comment was meant to deflect attention from the real issue at hand which is the studios taking advantage of the writers by not compensating them fairly by adjusting their pay to the new models of media consumption. Seems like this is a recurring theme - CEO of badly run media company blames Apple and its CEO for their lack of vision, direction and aptitude at running and adapting a business.

art: "What does Steve's choice of diet have to do with Eisner's racist comment?"

wow.. just.. wow..

so now religion becomes a 'race' ?

The strike is a perfect example of the way big media operates. The writer's guild is simply asking for similar terms/protections and coverage on internet distribution as they have on network distribution. Their "stupid" profit demands are really quite reasonable. If the networks make a reasonable profit, so do the writers. Check it out:

'What's the biggest issue? Internet and New Media

What are we asking for in Internet and New Media? Two things: 1. Residuals for reuse of content (like replaying tv shows) on the internet. We're asking for residuals of 2.5% of revenue -- that means for every dollar they get paid, we'd get 2 and a half cents. It's a flat percentage, so if they're right and they're never ever going to make a penny, well then, we won't either. No harm, no foul. Since 2.5% is our starting point, in any normal negotiation we'd end up somewhere between what they want to pay (.3%) and what we're asking for (2.5%). I'd guess 1 to 1.5 %. 2. Coverage and protections for original content (new stuff we create for the internet.) We're asking for basic protections so that when we write original stuff for the internet, we have rights -- health and pension, minimum amounts, credits and separated rights (so if we make some amazing character or show, we get the right to share in its success.) We're just asking for the same protections we already have for writing in TV or film. Nothing new or weird. Just the basics.

What are the other issues? DVDs: Currently we get .3% per dvd, we're asking for .6%. Translation: now we get 4 cents per dvd. We are asking for 8 cents per dvd. Since most DVD's cost at least 10 bucks, that doesn't exactly seem like a bank-breaker. Whatever. Enforcement of Coverage: There are lots of shows, like game shows, documentaries and talk shows, where writing is supposed to be covered under our contract. The companies sometimes just ignore the contract -- which means folks don't get health and pension, and if they ask for it, they get fired. We want them to stop that, and honor the contract they signed. Expansion of Coverage: We want to cover stuff where writers are working without coverage, which means without health and pension and other protections. The two big areas are animation and reality. We think those writers should be covered.

Where is the iSuppli-like company for a DVD distribution?

Lets take a season pack of a tv show on DVD and get its breakdown cost of who gets what.

Let's see where the big bucks go.

No one will do such good things, we will all look at only the hardware parts, things that are easy to do. That's why we need journalists and investigators. Not shitty bloggers.

Go Get 'Em Synthmeister. Getting appropriate shares of profits on new media seems fair, but of course studios like NBC/Universal will say, "See, this is why we have to charge $4.99 per episode on iTunes! Those writers are us taking us to the cleaners!" Well, that and they need to be willing to actually pay for good scripts to begin with, then they might have more hit shows.

Good luck to you guys!

As for Eisner: "Bitter, party of one. Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready."

MW: "And Leon's getting larger." Now that's good writing!

If he wants a cut of things like a cut of iPods then why don't TV companies get a cut of all TV sales?

If someone creates a work for hire, writer, artist, etc... a price is agreed upon and then the person is paid. If the work is then sold again through another way not anticipated by the original deal, they should be paid again for the additional sales.

Look's to me like Eisner doesn't want to pay writers for their work that is sold online. Thinking like this is what got him ousted in the first place.

Eisner said it best "The studios make deals with Steve Jobs", a deal means they signed a contract. No one forced them to sign it. "Oh little old Apple will never go anywhere", who looks like the fool now?

Seeing as how Eisner made hundreds of millions of dollars while running/raping Disney, you can imagine how well the Writers Union is taking Eisner's little rant.

I agree the WGA should re-negotiate but can't we get a guarantee clause from both sides that no one will ever write or produce shows like ABC's Cavemen EVER AGAIN?
EVER!

How can their be no profits in distributing tv shows over iTunes? It costs the studios ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, not even bandwidth! Methinks the money is getting sucked up by the studio execs, not Apple. And yes, the writers deserve a cut of that money.

It's been general knowledge for years around LA that Michael Eisner is a clueless asshole has performed the classic Peter Principle bounce into total irrelevance. Now the depth of his assholiness and pathetic stupidity has made its way into general circulation since he was given the chance to embarrass himself via his little bully pulpit.

That a sad, sick man who has gone from a position of prominence into being a non-factor in the entertainment business now wants to lash out at those who have taken his place is not at all surprising. That he can't even do it with some degree of rationality and/or authority is actually kind of disappointing.

Trust me, there are a lot of folks in LA who are getting a lot of entertainment and amusement out of Michael Eisner's plight--it is a source of much wit over dinners around town.

When you've stepped on as many toes as Eisner has, there's no shortage of feet waiting to kick you when you're down.

The strike is the PERFECT opportunity for independent production companies and the underground to push their products.

Eisner was such a smart guy, he was within spitting distance of letting Pixar go on the open market, where the other studios were salivating for a distribution deal with them, all because Pixar wanted a good contract compared to the newbie, unproven producer contract it originally signed with Disney. Because of his stance (and a few other things), he got canned.

The writers see where the future is going, and that's to more and more diverse content delivery. The big networks are on their way to becoming just another cable channel, and technology is fast approaching where it will be feasible to broadcast entertainment via the internet and have some decent quality.

I seriously doubt that the writer's strike is due solely to online percentages of non-existent revenue. Methinks Eisner doesn't want to pay his writers anything, which may also help explain how he drove Disney's movie and animation departments into the ground with bad story lines.

So, is this the Emperor's Newest Groove?

Too bad the company is not making a ton off digital sales. I'm not paying any more than $1.99 for a TV show. Period. The prices are just right where they are.

The current writers' contract is heavily weighted towards the old network business of first-run and reruns. That system has been fundamentally shaken by Internet distribution. And if Eisner says waiting until the technology is more "mature" would be better for writers, it's a better piece of fiction than many of the scripts he bankrolled.

Why are writers only getting a ridiculously low .3% of DVD sales? Because they signed a contract during the early days of VHS and got hookwinked to accept a low rate for the burgeoning "new" technology. They've been stuck with that absurdly low rate ever since. If they don't get their fair piece of online sales now, they never will.

Even though my income is partially based on the entertainment industry -- no new shows, no new marketing campaigns to promote them -- I support the guild 100 percent!

a Shiite Muslim
man does it have to get religious?

I don't care what religion Jobs is...
he's a decent person either way.

j

I don't get how he can decide that Apple is ripping them off. Where are the costs involved with selling content through iTS? Whether music, movies, or TV, it's all pre-produced content that takes next to nothing in the way of resources make available via iTunes. There's no packaging, no physical media, no shipping, and Apple covers the cost of digital delivery. Seems to me that it's just one more revenue stream with a very low price of admission. The only thing they need to do is reformat it for iTunes. What's the problem?

Art, Shiite Muslims can be any race. That wasn't a racist comment.

If someone working for Disney made racist comment like that while under his leadership, the person would have been fired. I hope every company using his consulting service cancels their contract with him.

Once a shithead, ALWAYS a shithead.

Since Eisner f**ked up Disney several years back by screwing over anything pre-1985 and making anything since the start of his tortuous tenure extremely mainstream and f**k everyone else, I'm less inclined to believe him when he makes idiotic comments like he did.

BJ

Let's call Eisner what he really is... a schmendrick!

Eisner is a schmuck, too.

He's a putz!

Hollywood jews can't stand it when a gentile outperforms them.

If by BLAME you mean THANK, then, I agree.

Do you think that's nuspell (new spell) for View Guru?

The majority of the stuff these people write is crap. I say fire all their asses and hire non union people.

Maybe "Prom Queen" didn't make any money because it sucked. I know I never heard of it before reading this article.

Oh, and I'm sure that many Jews really wish that Eisner would convert to Islam or Scientology or something.

-jcr

@ Synthmeister:

Wait, there are writers on reality TV? Isn't that an oxymoron?

@s,

Again, that comment wasn't racist. I'm not defending Eisner, but call it what it is, huh?

Then again, SJ was adopted and comes from Syrian descent. Perhaps he wasn't being facetious? Before I get jumped on, JUST KIDDING!

See what happened? The WGA went on strike and Eisner had no script and had to ad-lib it. Go writers go!! Behind you all the way.

Eisner's excuse (from what I read here) doesn't make much sense. If the guild only wants a percentage of the digital profits, and Eisner contends they are making 0 profits, then the guild still gets 0.
I think part of the issue is the guild saying "prove to me you are making 0 profits and open your books and show me how much profit you're making" and the studios being found to be engaging in creative book-keeping.