A performer and producer of Internet content named David Lawrence, who probably knows nothing about me just as I know nothing about him, has written and circulated a little essay, mostly I gather throughout the voiceover community. (Well, I do know one thing about Mr. Lawrence, which is that he constantly bombards me with self-promotional Spam and I wish he'd stop.) His article argues that the WGA is going about its strike all wrong, and that his union (he's in SAG) will make the same mistake if they fight for a share of Internet revenues. Since a couple of folks have asked me what I think of it, I thought I'd post my response. But first, if you somehow didn't find a copy in your e-mailbox amidst the Cialis ads and would like to read it, it's been posted here.

Okay then. Let me tell you why I don't think his argument holds a lot of H2O…

The argument is that there's no money to be made on things like webisodes on the Internet so it's daffy for a union to fight for that when they could be fighting for other, more tangible things. His primary evidence seems to be that he's tried it (the man has dozens of websites) and he hasn't been able to make any money on the Internet so that proves (I guess) that Disney, Time Warner, Fox, Sony, Paramount and Universal won't make any money on the Internet. He's been producing or appearing on webisodes like Goodnight Burbank and Infected on Revision3 and other ventures most of us have never heard of and they make only pennies. So obviously if ABC starts offering downloads of Lost on the Internet for a fee or Sony lets you download the next Spider-Man movie for a couple bucks, they'll make only pennies.

Or maybe he thinks they'll make nickels, I don't know. I also don't get the part where he says "I've also figured out ways to make several millions of dollars on the Internet over the last 15 years or so" but then goes on to say you can't make any money on the Internet. Later, he appends "…the money I've made on the Internet does not obviate my statement that the networks aren't making, or can't make, money on the net — in fact, it proves they can."

So, uh, if they can, might this not be a good time for us to start demanding a hunk of that money? I mean, if you can figure out how to make money on the 'net, there must be someone at all those big companies who can stumble onto the secret. Or maybe the guys at Google who are blissfully unaware there's no money to be made selling web advertising could come up with something.

You know what this reminds me of? When home video was starting — this was in the Flintstonian era of Beta — there were a few stores selling movies on tape. There weren't many because none of the major studios were yet offering the movies we really wanted. At that moment, there wasn't a lot of cash in home video. The day you could start buying mainstream releases, the day I bought the first of the ninety-three different versions of Goldfinger I've had to purchase over the years, it all changed. The big studios, the ones that control and define the business, went almost instantly from "We'll never sell our movies for home viewing" to "How fast can we get the DVD into stores?"

The home video biz exploded and the unions were way behind the curve. They're still playing Catch-Up because the Producers were able to structure the business in terms that were disadvantageous to sharing. And now the same companies are trying to do the same thing with Internet transmissions, defining almost everything as "promotional" and therefore not subject to established residual deals.

Are they really making no money on the Internet? They sure don't seem to think so. Every single entertainment conglomerate is assuring its stockholders that there are zillions to be made there and that the company is expertly positioned to maximize those bucks. More to the immediate point, if there's no money to be made on the Internet, it oughta be a breeze to halt the crippling strike that's costing them millions per day and destroying their Fall TV schedule and plans for film production in early '08. All they have to do it offer us a respectable percentage of that "no money" or a formula where our share kicks in only after revenues hit a certain level that reasonably denotes financial success. If there's no money, that won't cost them anything.

Of course, how much they're making today is not what this strike is about. It's how much they stand to make tomorrow and whether we're going to let them unilaterally write the rulebook for an industry that belongs to all of us. Some of us don't think that's such a great idea.

With all due respect to Mr. Lawrence, who I don't know at all, I suspect he's been working the Poverty Row corner of the Internet, not the section that Disney and Time Warner are looking to build. He speaks of actors working for free on webisodes. If I were in SAG, I think I'd like my union to be making it clear to Sony that they can't get union talent to work on their 'net projects for free. If I were an actor on Ugly Betty, I think I'd like my union to tell its production company that they can't, in lieu of rerunning those shows on network and paying me the agreed-upon residuals, slap them up on an ad-supported website and let a million people download them with nothing going my way.

They're not putting content on the web in order to lose money. These people don't even give anything away because they think they'll break even on the deal. They're doing it because they think they'll make enough cash to make Richie Rich look like M.C. Hammer. They may tell you that they aren't making any money off the deal but come on. These are the people who were telling Alan Alda that the M*A*S*H TV show had yet to turn a profit. Not only do we not have to believe them but they don't really expect us to believe them. It's just something they say as part of the never-ending campaign in this world to get talented people to write and perform and otherwise work for little or no money. If we let them get away with it, there will be no money on the Internet…for us.

KABC, the local ABC television station in Los Angeles, commissioned a poll about how the general population of the town views the Writers Guild Strike. 69% said they're on the side of the Writers, 8% sides with the studios and the rest aren't taking sides. That's a lot better for our team than I would ever have imagined.

Here's a news clip of Bill Scott and June Foray from around 1985 when they made an appearance at an animation festival in Boston. That was probably one of Bill's last public appearances before a heart attack took him away from us.

I wrote my little morning rant about how we're being told there's no money on the Internet before I (just) read Damon Lindelof in this morning's New York Times. If I had, I could have saved myself a lot of time and just linked to him.

This morning, I posted a clip of Judy Garland and Mel Tormé singing. At the very end of the number, Ms. Garland hits and holds a very long note and the question has come up as to whether she did this live at the taping or if there was an audio trick employed.

I'm sure a singer of her ability could sustain a note like that under ideal conditions. But this was taped live in front of a studio audience and it came at the end of a two-minute number that was shot without edits. In a recording studio, a singer can do it a hundred times and they can even "punch in," redoing just a small section of a recording. They couldn't have Judy and Mel keep doing the number over and over and over until she got it right…or could they? What if it took ten or twenty takes and blew out her voice? Also, it's worth noting that Judy was taping an entire variety show that day, which is a tiring and stressful task for anyone.

I was once involved with a variety show for which a prominent singing star sang live during the taping but — just in case — he'd also prerecorded all his vocals so that if his voice started to go on him, he could lip-sync to those tracks. And by the end of the day, we were using them.

We can all watch the clip of Judy and venture guesses as to whether she really sang that last note live. I'm wondering if anyone knows for sure.

We start today — and since I'm tight on time, we may close today — with this one from this one from Peter W. Randall…

The folks at my office say it's silly for the Writers to strike over a piece of revenue from the Internet since there is no revenue on the Internet. No one's making money on the Internet, they say. What do you say to that?

I say that by allowing this strike to happen, the Producers have already probably cost themselves a minimum of $500 million and it could easily spill over into the billions within a week or three. They've thrown almost every phase of their businesses into uncertainty and chaos. They're laying off loyal employees and discussing how much of the audience they'll lose during the strike which might never come back to their product.

It would be Braindead Stupid of them to let all that occur if they could have headed it off by giving us a tiny percentage of an area where there isn't or won't be any money. You can do the math on this yourself. What's 5% of Zero? Oh, hell. Let's be generous. Make it 10%.

There's an e-mail circulating from some guy who's arguing the point your friends are arguing. In it, he says in effect, "I can tell you that from my experience that there's almost no money to be made on the Internet and I oughta know. I have a whole bunch of websites and I've barely made a dime off them." The reply to that, of course, is: "That's because you, unlike NBC, aren't offering full episodes of My Name Is Earl on your website."

But it's actually more than that because the WGA stance is not about getting X% out of what's currently coming in. It's about not allowing the Producers to build an entire infrastructure on the 'net with all sorts of precedents and definitions established that will long exclude the unions from sharing in new revenue streams. For instance, they want to say that just about anything they put on a website for streaming or download, regardless of how they can "monetize" it (hate that verb) is "promotional" and therefore should be exempt from residuals. We need to nip that one, as Deputy Fife used to say, in the bud.

There are a lot of predictions about where the delivery and sale of content is going with regard to the web but every single one involves a closer relationship with the old methods and a blurring of the distinctions. To make this point, let me tell you about My TiVo.

My TiVo is a wonderful thing. Actually, it's so wonderful that I have three of them but let's just talk about one. I can set My TiVo to record The Office and then I can watch The Office at my convenience. That alone would make it a good thing but My TiVo can do so much more than that because my TiVo is connected to this amazing thing called the Internet. Because it is, My TiVo can download movies from outfits like Amazon and Netflix. I can buy a movie and watch it in my home without the studios even having to spend the three cents or whatever it costs to make a DVD these days. I can use My TiVo to listen to XM Satellite Radio. If I had My TiVo hooked up to cable TV, depending on where I lived, I might be able to have My TiVo download that episode of The Office for a fee if I didn't record it when it first aired. I've downloaded TV shows and movies from the Internet via my computer and transferred them to My TiVo for viewing purposes. Any day now, I'll probably be able to download anything I could ever want to watch via the Internet and watch it on My TiVo.

And I do all this on the same machine, punching the same buttons on the same remote control. I watch on the same TV and since Time Warner owns my cable company and Fox owns much of my satellite provider…well, the experience of watching television via the old-fashioned means is almost seamlessly morphing into the experience of watching it via the Internet.

The old business models are all changing. The old financial structure of broadcast television from a Writer's viewpoint, was that you write the show for X dollars, predicated on the understanding that if it reruns, you'll receive Y dollars. Everyone agreed to that…perhaps grudgingly in some cases, but they agreed. A Writer's compensation for writing a show is not X dollars. It's X plus whatever Y yields. But in the new model, the Producers are paying X and then if the Y part goes anywhere near the Internet, they argue it's "promotional" and claim that no back-end money is due. Or at best, they insist they'll pay on the DVD formula, which isn't nothing but it's close.

That's dangerous for the Writers in a couple of ways. Not only do we lose a vital part of our incomes but as more and more of the studios' and networks' profits come via Internet delivery, they're going to be arguing that the old first-run, conventional network parts of their operations are less profitable. They'll use that as an argument for cutting X. So if we don't establish our stake in all these new technologies now, we'll lose on both ends. We'll have no share of the expanding field and a smaller share of the shrinking one.

Or look at it from the standpoint of a guy who writes movies. I, as a consumer, can purchase and watch your film more ways than ever before, all by sitting in this very chair, watching the same TV screen and using the same remote control device. I can watch it on broadcast television. I can watch it on HBO. I can watch it on pay-per-view. I can rent the DVD from Netflix and watch it here. I can buy the DVD from Amazon and watch it here. I can have Amazon or Netflix do a digital delivery to My TiVo. And once it's on My TiVo, there's not a lot anyone can do to stop me from burning a DVD of it or putting it on my iPod or my iPhone or my iChing or whatever iHave.

From the POV of a consumer, it's pretty much the same to me: Same TV, same remote control, same chair, even the same movie. But the back-end dollars to you, the Writer, can vary wildly from decent to non-existent…and any day now, it'll be worse. Because Time-Warner is now streaming (for a fee) episodes of vintage and recent TV shows and is close to marketing vintage, recent and maybe even current movies the same way.

When the Producers say, "There's no money in the Internet," they're not to be believed. They never say there's any money when it means sharing with anyone. They brag to stockholders how much they're making and their executives receive the kind of salaries you pay someone who's making zillions for you…but when any union staggers up like Oliver Twist and says, "Please, sir, may I have some more?", they cry poverty and wail about unrecoupable losses and gasp, "More? You have to get less!"

I mean, these are the people who told James Garner they'd never made a profit on The Rockford Files and who were arguing until just recently that the original Star Trek was still in deficits. And we're supposed to believe them that they haven't quite figured out the Internet yet? That they need another three or six years to study how to make money on it so they'll know how to cut us in on it? (Yeah, I'm sure our cut will be their number one concern.) Three or six years from now, they'll only have figured out how to totally exclude writers, actors, directors and other contributors from the table. Because these companies are really good at devising ways of making money…and even better at devising excuses to not share it. Why on Earth would we want to give them any more of a head start than they've already had?

Several of my favorite websites have started featuring ads that play audio — often, quite loud audio — the second you click over to the site. Or maybe I should say they used to be some of my favorite websites before they started doing that.

From the 1964 Judy Garland Show on CBS, the lady herself and Mel Tormé sing "The Trolley Song." Tormé was a recurring guest star on the show, as well as being the guy in charge of putting together songs and special musical material every week. Shortly after this was taped, he and Judy had a falling-out and he was fired…not a huge loss for Mel because the show was already teetering on the verge of cancellation and Ms. Garland would be fired a few weeks later.

Several years later, after Garland was dead, Mr. Tormé wrote a book about his experiences on the series. It was called The Other Side of the Rainbow, With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol and while it professed love and admiration for Judy, it sure didn't make her out to be a very nice or stable person. I've met about a half dozen people who worked on the show and I've always asked them how accurate it was. Unanimous reply: Not very. They all say Tormé made himself look good at the expense of others and the truth, though they've split evenly on whether Garland was fairly depicted.

I have no idea but the whole series (which is available on DVD) has fascinated a lot of people, as much for the backstage tales as the often-memorable musical performances. Here's one of those musical moments…

Here's news of another strike: The union that represents Broadway stagehands has been working without a contract since July 31 and has chosen today to walk off their jobs. All but eight Broadway shows are immediately going dark and no one seems to know how long this will last. The previous strike, which was in 2003, ran for four days.

I'm heading for New York this coming week for some meetings with publishers, some bicoastal picketing, a comic convention and a bit of show-going. So am I afraid that the strike will mean the shows I intend to see won't be playing? Nope. I'm lucky enough to have tix for two shows that are among the eight that are unaffected by the strike. They're at theaters that have signed a separate deal with Local One, the Stagehands' union. I tried to get seats to Jersey Boys, which is among those that will close, but it's sold out and all my "I can get you house seats" friends found that they couldn't.

After I posted what I just posted, I came across this video which makes a lot of the same points. This is from the WGA General Meeting of a week ago Thursday. A writer named Howard Gould, who's a member of the Negotiating Committee, explains in a little more than three minutes how he came to see the necessity of this strike.

His speech came a little late in the proceedings. A lot of members had left by then, which is why you'll see a lot of empty chairs. But those of us who were still there gave Howard a standing-o because what he said seemed just so right.

This is my fourth WGA strike and while many things are the same as they always are, many are different. The main one in the latter category is that for the first time in my experience, there is no real opposition within the Guild.

That is amazing. Our members…they are a contentious lot, partly because the nature of writing seems to attract the highly-opinionated, partly because we have such varied specialties and lifestyles. Within the WGA, you have guys who wrote for Eddie Cantor and gals who just graduated Film School and sold their first script. You have the producer-writer who's way more producer than writer. You have the scribe who's unhappy with how his/her career's been going and who's always taking it out on the Guild, blaming it because he/she still doesn't own the house next door to Paul Haggis. You have game show writers, comedy writers, soap opera writers, dramatic writers, variety show writers, people who write slasher films, serious dramatists, people who write The Simpsons, documentary writers and Bruce Vilanch. You have a certain number of people who make a million or two per script and an awful lot who are sweating next month's mortgage payment, and you also have some people who are very brave about Not Working and others who view that in abject terror.

It's quite a mix.

In my previous strikes, I heard a lot from what we might call the naysayers…the faction that argues that striking at a certain moment or for specific issues is a bad idea. Sometimes, I even think they're right…though with some of them, that's due to the Stopped Clock principle. They always say it so it's occasionally true. In 1985, the "Don't Strike" crowd got their wish and stopped a strike. I think they were spectacularly wrong that year, especially the ones who screamed, "There will never be any money in home video!" Yeah, right. It's amazing how many of those people could now pass polygraph tests and swear that they were loyal supporters of that strike and can't believe how many lunkheads opposed it.

In this strike, I am hearing none of that. So far, not a peep. Not from within the WGA ranks, anyway. Now, granted: The strike's only about a week old but usually, this view is heard by now, heard before the strike happens, in fact. Commencing on or before Day One of previous strikes, it was receiving a disproportionate share of attention because, after all, the Producers control a lot of the media and they like "Dissent grows within WGA" as a headline. Plus, of course, a divided union is a more interesting news story than one that's hanging together. If the strike goes on another few weeks, there'll be some members starting to cave and their number will be blown all out of scale in the press.

But so far, the mob that yells, "Take the offer and let's get back to work" has been pretty much non-existent. Why? Well, a huge reason is that the idea of agreeing to let the studios make as much money as they can off the Internet with us receiving bupkis is just too outrageous. Even those whose hearts are with Management have a hard time siding with that one. But there's an even bigger reason that no one in the WGA wants to take the offer and that is that there is no offer.

It struck me the other day that that's one thing that's different this time. In my previous strikes, the Producers had presented us with a unilateral and rotten contract proposal — a few increases in minimums, generally below the cost-of-living rates…a few rollbacks, some of them quite large…and there's always one little item that we can celebrate as a "gain." Usually, these offers aren't even a product of two-way negotiations. Usually, the Producers just refuse to listen to anything we want to say and instead hand us a bad "take it or leave it" offer and to leave it means to go on strike. This time, there have been some talks — apparently fruitless — that have led to no offer. There is no piece of paper that the "Don't Strike" mob can wave about at the moment and insist is good enough.

As I understand it, the Producers' position at this moment is as follows: Take the two most important issues — DVDs and Internet delivery — off the table. Drop all your demands in those areas and then (and only then) we'll sit down with you and make a decent offer that covers the other stuff.

So if someone asks you why the WGA is striking…well, there it is. We haven't accepted the deal because there is no deal. All there is is a demand that we surrender before they'll discuss surrender terms. Matter of fact, given the Producers' long history of "negotiating" by dictating their terms and then walking out of the room, it's unlikely that they will discuss anything in a give-and-take manner even then.

I have one friend — well, let's call this fellow an acquaintance — who I've known since we worked on a variety show way back in the days when there were variety shows. He's always been terrified of a strike…any strike for any reason at any time. He's always talking about burning his home down. Every time anyone mentions the "s" word in his presence, he starts hollering, "Why don't we all just save time and burn our houses?" If the Producers were demanding their hedges be trimmed "or else," he'd be on Peter Chernin's lawn with the clippers at this very moment.

Even he doesn't see that the WGA can do anything but what it's doing. I hope the boys at the AMPTP understand that when they can't even get this guy on their side, they've really botched this thing up.

I'm not sure when it was done — and I don't know where to find a copy of the whole thing (does anyone?) — but Stephen Sondheim did a TV special some years ago where he taught students how to sing some of his songs. A while ago, in this posting, I linked to a clip of him critiquing a brave young woman who was attempting to sing "Send in the Clowns," not only in front of its composer but in a public spectacle where he was expected to find fault with her performance. Here, three brave students take on one of Sondheim's most difficult songs with him playing teacher. The most interesting thing about this clip is the look on his face when he hears something he likes. It's a look I've seen on the face of every great songwriter I've been able to look at when he's hearing his song the way he wants to hear his song.

I didn't make it to the protest rally today. I tried to but with 4000 striking writers turning out, the parking situation was impossible. After driving around for a half-hour, I figured that if they had that kind of turnout, they probably wouldn't miss me.

With Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien refusing to cross picket lines and do their shows, there are rumors that NBC may insist on having guest hosts brought in to replace them. Now, there's a career-ender if ever there was one: Scab Guest Host. It'll be interesting to see whose career is so desperate that they'll even appear on those shows, let alone host. I mean, besides Joan Rivers.

I'll be doing more Q-and-A over the weekend but I thought it might interest someone to know that this item — the one in which I explained why I believe writers deserve residuals — has become the most-read posting in the four and a half years that this weblog has been around. It's had more hits than all the women who've ever dated Bobby Brown combined.

Okay, that's a pretty awful joke. Just remember I'm on strike.

In the meantime, go read Mark Harris on why the Writers are in the right. I don't agree with the folks who are saying the WGA leadership could have done a lot more to prepare for this but what's done is done. Harris is correct about the larger, current issues.

Only time for two this morning, starting with this one from Neil Ottenstein…

I was reading an article today about how Fox executives are saying that their network will actually benefit from the WGA strike — higher than ever ratings for American Idol and less costs otherwise. I was thinking that this might actually be a good thing for the WGA. If all the studios were suffering equally then they might be more united in this, knowing that at least the other guys are doing just as poorly. If
on the other hand, Fox is actually doing better, and much better in comparison to the others, then maybe the other networks will realize that they need to get some high quality scripted shows out there to provide some competition. In order to actually be competitive they need to settle the strike.

It might be a good thing for the WGA. It might also be true, at least in the short run. One of the reasons WGA strikes tend to be longer than some other unions' (or happen more often) is this delayed impact that we have when we walk. It takes a while for our absence to get noticed and there's also sometimes a brief benefit to the studios and networks when they clear out some old product, write off some old contracts, etc. Of course, they're almost always going to say that they're hurting less than they are and might even claim they're delighted that we're striking. That's just part of the game that's being played.

I learned this trick when I was thirteen years old and buying old comic books I really, really wanted. You dare not let the seller know how much you want it when you're haggling over price. You have to act like it doesn't matter that much to you or that there are other places you can get it cheaper. It works the same way in any negotiation and all the players know it. In this case, the Producers have to say, "Oh, we can wait a while for the Writers to come crawling back to the bargaining table. We're not hurting. In fact, some of us are even doing better because of the strike."

And then we have this from Boyd Jeremy…

Regarding this matter of you writers being overpaid, do you think you are? What do you say to someone who works a 40 hour week selling shoes for less money than a writer makes in twenty minutes?

I think, first of all, you note that there are shoe salesmen who make a lot more money than some of the people I'll be marching with in about an hour. What I think some people don't "get" is that show business is one of those lottery-like fields where only a few do really, really well. They are not typical. They also are not the people whose incomes would be most affected by any strike. Strikes are generally about setting or raising minimums.

Next year, the Screen Actors Guild will get some sort of increase in scale payments and may even have to strike to get it. Whatever they get will have no meaningful impact on the annual income of Mr. Tom Hanks. He might make a few more bucks off those Bosom Buddies DVDs but it'll probably amount to about what he tips the servers at his favorite restaurant. Still, if actors are picketing, the Producers will be wailing, "Those ungrateful, overpaid actors! Why, do you know how much we have to pay Tom Hanks to make a movie for us?" But of course, those people bid against each other to get Tom Hanks. They offer him that money because they believe he's worth it. You can't say someone is overpaid and then offer him five million dollars more than he got on his last job.

Well, you can. And they do. But we don't have to think anyone, including the person saying that, really believes it.

The thing I would say to anyone who thinks TV and movie writers make "too much" (whatever that means) is…well, I'd say a couple things. One is that there's a lot of money in this industry. Some ventures are very profitable and if you're an important contributor to one of those, you ought to get paid well. If you don't get paid well, it does not mean (as I've noted here before) that the money you don't get goes to widows and orphans. It goes to the studios and the CEOs and to someone else who will probably have less to do with the success of the show or movie than you do and may already be even more "overpaid" by whatever definition of that word is being applied to you.

You also — and this is a very real issue for some of us — lose in non-monetary ways when you aren't paid well. The people you work with treat you and your work better when you establish its value, at least in comparison to what everyone else is receiving. That may not be the most logical thing in the world but it's usually true. There is a "pecking order" and a hierarchy of respect on any production and it is not disconnected from the size of the checks everyone's getting. You often establish your importance in that hierarchy by being one of the better-paid participants. Even if you turn around and give half your fee to those widows and orphans, you oughta get every dollar you can get without killing somebody. It's one of the best ways to remind everyone what you're worth.

Also, of course, sometimes it takes a long period of unpaid or lowly-paid struggle to get to the point where you can command Top Dollar and then it doesn't last all that long. A writer spends five years writing unsold, spec screenplays. Finally, he sells one that gets made and the movie's a hit. He gets paid very well for the next one or two and his fee skyrockets…but at some point, it crashes back down to Earth and he's back to the low money and writing scripts that don't get sold. He may seem overpaid for a time there but not when you average it out over the length of his career. I don't know a lot about the business of selling shoes but I don't think they have anything similar going on there.

Which I guess would be the main thing I'd say to that person. You really don't know, just as I don't know what "overpaid" would be for a shoe salesman. I suppose no paycheck would be too large if he was selling enough shoes…and he wouldn't be getting that compensation, whatever it was, if the store wasn't making a decent amount from his efforts. I wonder if anyone who thinks a TV writer is overpaid also thinks a novelist whose book sells 50,000 copies and goes through ten printings shouldn't make a lot more than an author who sells 5,000 copies of one press run.

A few of the e-mails I've received about the strike and some of the web chatter I've read suggest to me that the commenters know as little about my profession as I do about theirs. That is not in any way a putdown of what they do. Perhaps in a strict numerical way, I have the potential to make a lot more in my line of work than they do. That's quite possible. I also have potential downsides that they don't have and perhaps aren't seeing when they're only looking at reports, sometimes exaggerated or way outta context, of what a few in my profession receive. The other man's grass and all that.

No one, I should hope, is expecting you to feel sorry for us Professional Writers because we're getting gypped on DVD money and Internet downloads and the like. Not a one of us chose this line of work under duress. This is just a business dispute — a larger, nastier version of the kind of thing that goes on thousands of times a day in Hollywood when we aren't on strike, and which happens in some form in any profitable business. We may get emotional because we do see our work and human lives getting damaged by a number of things that the Producers have done or are attempting to do. You'd get emotional if your boss was trying to slash your salary, too. Or whittle away your family's health insurance.

I think we'd just like you not to buy the "spin" that the strike is because we're tired of filling our swimming pools with Evian water and need the extra bucks to buy Pellegrino. The folks in Management — the Nick Counters of the world, whose jobs are to get us to sign for as little money as possible — certainly don't believe that. They're in the business. They know how things work and where the money is. So don't you believe it.

That's all for now. I gotta go carry a sign up and down in front of Fox.

Jim Hawthorne, a funny man and a pioneer of TV and radio in Los Angeles, has died at an age somewhere in his eighties.

I'm just old enough (I'm 55) to recall when Hawthorne was broadcasting in this town, always doing something so fresh and clever that people were talking about it the next day. His name was often mentioned in the same sentence as an Ernie Kovacs or a Steve Allen…both of whom acknowledged him as friendly competition and occasional inspiration. Hawthorne also had a brief film career, including a period when he was teamed with comic actor Joe Besser after Besser left The Three Stooges.

I wrote about Hawthorne here and linked you to a video clip that sadly doesn't capture the general wonderfulness of his on-air energy. But to those of us who remember him fondly, it's better than nothing.