Hollywood writers are refusing to pick up their pens (or rather tap their keyboards) in a strike prompted by the Internet. The entertainment industry’s position is that writers should not be compensated for Internet revenue, projected to be $4.3 billion over the next three years. Writers worry that, as TV and the Internet continue toward convergence, they may ultimately see their income drop dramatically–by half or more–as we watch more video online and less on our televisions. They learned a lesson from the 1980’s, when they agreed to take a cut in compensation for home video revenue, because it was a new medium that everyone, including writers, wanted to encourage. VHS led to DVD and, 20 years later, writers are still waiting for the studios to make good on their promise to retroactively compensate them once the revenue from home video sales was understood and established. Now writers are faced with a similar suggestion–let us use your work for free until we see where this Web thing is going, say the studios. Please.
The entertainment industry’s attitude toward Internet revenue offers lessons for the rest of us using the Internet for business. The dot com bubble taught us that the Web cannot ultimately be free. Start-ups that offered content and services at little or no cost ultimately failed. Investors funded them expecting a return on their money. When the money didn’t come, the investors stopped writing checks. The Web is really just another communication and distribution channel. To expect everything online to be free is like early 20th century travelers expecting cars to be free because they were a new, unproven alternative to the horse and buggy. The problem is, someone had to pay for the steel and rubber used to build them, and someone had to assemble them. We all have to buy groceries, pay for health insurance (or do without) and educate our kids. We cannot do that without income–including those of us who write as a profession.
A good friend of mine, who worked as a professional journalist for almost 20 years, recently expressed frustration that online newspaper, radio and TV news sites were forcing us to view ads or watch commercials before allowing us access to content. I reminded her that revenue from newspaper and radio advertisers paid her rent and bought her groceries for most of her adult life. Everything has a price.
If writers are not paid fairly for their contributions to industry, then we end up with hobby writing. There will be less of it to consume, and it will become increasingly amateurish. I have seen a similar phenomenon in business communications. Business owners, particularly in small businesses, often do marketing themselves, even though they have no training or experience in creating marketing communications.
A lot of people say they are writers. But as someone who has honed the craft of creating persuasive, informative brochures, presentations and Websites for my entire career, I humbly assert that just because you can string together a noun and a verb, that doesn’t make you a writer. Without professional marketing, these businesses struggle to convince new customers to buy their products and services. They don’t seem to understand that their mediocre marketing materials leave their prospects with the impression that they are less than professional. Without marketing, prospects don’t know how to find you. They don’t know how to differentiate you from your competitors. And they have less of an incentive to write you a check.
“Free” content online should be seen as a promotion, a sampling of what you will get when you pay up. The Web should be viewed as a vehicle for persuasion, for customer service, for informing markets and for distributing goods and services. What you provide for free only serves to lead you to more customers and more revenue. Even open source software fits this paradigm. With open source, everyone works together to improve on what ultimately becomes a product you pay for, or is a “loss-leader” for a paid service to implement, support and service it, or is a promotion built by a developer with the goal of proving their prowess and getting a paying gig.
In those cases where content is offered online, along with advertising to pay for it, I think that’s fair. We have grown to think that television is free, because we learned to accept and tolerate the commercials. We even paid attention to them, and rewarded advertisers with our perceptions and purchases. Why not the same for the Web? Advertising can be elegantly done and non-obtrusive. It is not unreasonable to expect consumers of media to trade a little attention for the “free” entertainment and/or information.
Back in Hollywood, entertainment industry executives should consider this: I can’t leave the store with a DVD without paying for it, because the retailer, the distributor and the producer view that as stealing. Should I tell the security guard at my local Barnes & Noble that I should take the DVD for free, because the DVD market is still shaking out? Why do entertainment producers and distributors think that the writing, the creative product that led to that DVD, should be any different?
Whether it’s a sitcom, your local news or your company brochure: You get what you pay for. If you pay for nothing, you get nothing.
To learn more about the Writer’s Guild of America’s strike:
Read: Nothing in life is free, including writing »
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