I get this writer's block, it comes as quite a shock

The FireDogLake Editorz (esp. Dean M.) have come up with a great video supporting the striking WGA writers:

Song by Matthew Grimm, video by Dean M. and the FDL Editorz

We've set up a tool that allows you to select your favorite TV show and send an email directly to the network executive and CEO in charge, telling them to negotiate in good faith with the writers and pay them a fair wage.

You can find it here.

This is a great, easy to direct your displeasure where it truly belongs: the executives, studios, and other content owners.

Here are some points from that page:

• Sumner Redstone of CBS says, "Viacom will double its revenues this year from digital."

• Les Moonves of CBS claimed, "when five million people watch CSI on the internet, "We will get paid for it regardless... We're going to get paid no matter where you get it from." (He projected a two billion dollar profit from that show alone.)

• Disney's (ABC) Annual Report reads, "The popularity of the ABC.com player adds to the Company's considerable success in monetizing its biggest hits."

• Yet the Alliance of Television and Motion Picture Producers (AMPTP) says that the internet and new media markets are too iffy, too conjectural to give writers a fair piece of.

• These positions are contradictory, and make no sense

• When Big Media doesn't get paid, it's called "piracy." When the writers don't get paid, it's "promotion."

Sumner Redstone's Viacom is also the parent company of Paramount Studios, so he is in charge of all their film and TV output. He's the one closing Paramount's historical scoring stage I mentioned here last week. This is where, since 1929, virtually all of Paramount's sound has been recorded, including most of Bing Crosby's work, and such films as Psycho, so I certainly have no love for him.

So he's a bastard from several angles.