From Free Press:

The Federal Communications Commission approved new rules that
will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America. The
new rules will further consolidate local media markets -- taking
away independent voices in cities already woefully short on
local news and investigative journalism.

Congress has the power to throw out these rules -- and if
100,000 people demand it, they'll have to listen. Click on the
link below to sign the open letter to Congress urging them to
stop the FCC and stand with the public interest.

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/sbmopenletter/

Freepress.net announces:[Yesterday] in the Congress, powerful US Senators from both parties berated FCC Chairman Kevin Martin about his plans to open the floodgates of media consolidation across America on December 18th. ... Free Press launched a 3-minute "Junk Media" video to sound the alarm, and rally opposition to the December 18th vote. www.stopbigmedia.com.

In the world of marketing, there is an almost obsessive focus on "traditional" advertising - television, magazines, newspapers, radio and outdoor. But highly targeted media, specifically online media, is getting more and more press.

That's why it's interesting to see a usually unconsidered media, like junk faxes, break through in a news story that, I think, has implications for other medias

Bill Moyers reports on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who against an outcry of public and political protest wants to hand Big Media even bigger, more powerful monopolies:

For more information visit: stopbigmedia.com/
And, to tell the FCC how you feel about Kevin Martin’s push to allow the Big Media Conglomerates to have more control over our news and entertainment go to: //www.fcc.gov/contacts.html
You will find a list of email, phone numbers, and addresses for the FCC.

With all the arguments about what constitutes fair compensation for writers in New Media, not enough attention is being paid to the more fundamental issue that Thom Taylor talks about in his article in Forbes Magazine from January 17th:

But the media has been wrong to suggest the current battle is simply over cash. While the debate does affect how to divide pieces of the digital media pie (for

This media advisory was just sent out by the WGA:

The Writers Guild of America will hold a press conference today, Sunday, Feb. 10, 12 Noon PST, at WGAW headquarters to update the media on important developments related to contract negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP companies.

Scheduled to appear: WGAW President Patric M. Verrone, WGAE President Michael Winship (available via phone line

Last week a coalition of WGA members went to NYC to talk with the seven largest media buyers on Wall Street.

These ad buyers are the large corporations (like Proctor & Gamble, Johson & Johnson, etc.) who advertise on TV and pay the networks' bills.

Our WGA crew, lead by Matthew Weiner, showrunner of "Mad Men," laid out our position to the advertisers -- who for some reason might not be getting entirely accurate forecasts from their corporate customers like CBS.

The event was a success. The coalition of media buyers agreed that our demands are reasonable and that it was "irresponsible on the part of the networks not to settle this dispute immediately."

It's tragic when a dog runs away. It's even worse when a media mogul runs away. Back on December 7th, someone left the door open, and the moguls all dashed out of negotiations into the street and haven't been seen since.

Our friend "Rubber Poultry" designed a series of Missing Mogul posters to help us track them down. And a reward is offered! If anyone can lure these moguls back to the table, he

The WGAw's general membership meeting will be held at the Shrine Auditoriumat at 7pm (NOT 6:30pm as we reported earlier) on Saturday night.

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As of Thursday afternoon, we are all still waiting on specific contract language. Lawyer and blogger Jonathan Handel has pulled together media reports of alleged WGA deal points on his Digital Media Law blog. But none of the rumors or media

In his Huffington Post article, How Big Media Breaks The Law On "Survivor" Island, Jonathan Tasini writes:

It now appears that Big Media has been routinely breaking wage-and-hour laws, pocketing piles of money it should have been paying to writers who work in reality television. Here's the story. Turns out that reality television is a sweat-shop for the writers who make those shows happen: long hours with no overtime pay, no health insurance, and no pension.He points out that this is a broader problem for all American workers, not just writers:

One day, hopefully very soon, the WGA strike will end. But the technological changes that sparked it will continue.

Over the past three months, we realized that in covering the dispute between writers and media conglomerates, we were also covering the evolution of the entertainment industry. Digital technology is changing how music, television, films and games are created and consumed. Old

As the media blackout continues, the only voices we hear are our own as we discuss the DGA deal, parsing it for nuances, looking for weaknesses and breakthroughs. On the picket line the work continues, as we keep our struggle in the public eye. Voices4Action! has been posting video interviews with our fellow members.

Steve Gaghan gives a clear-headed, no-nonsense view of the strike. Jordan

Virtually every newspaper and wire service has a story today about Attorney General Mukasey's letter to Speaker Pelosi yesterday, in which he refuses to permit the U.S. Attorney to refer the Miers and Bolten contempt citations to a federal grand jury. And yet, as far as I can tell, none of the media sources, nor any of the obvious web sites, contains a link to the letter itself. It's not posted on the DOJ website, nor on the Speaker's web sites, nor on the House Judiciary Committee site. [Of course, I haven't checked every possible site. If someone finds it, please let me know, thanks.]

What's up with that? One would have thought that, by now, it would be pretty much de rigueur for web stories to link to the documents that are the subject of their reports. I suspect that the reason this isn't the regular practice has something to do with the notion that if a newspaper gives its readers the actual documents in question, there will be less reason for the readers to rely exclusively on the paper's own account of the news. Still, in a link-crazy culture, it remains surprising that none of the major news outlets or web sites has seen fit to provide the letter.

As Veterans Day draws to a close, we've got a group of links with some of the latest news and analysis:

• We quoted from Damon Lindelof's contribution to the NY Times Op-Ed earlier today. The full text can be found here.

• Here's another excellent and concise YouTube explanation for what the writers are asking for. It's called Fade to Black.

• TV writer Ken Levine wrote a Simpson's parody on his blog.

• Commentary from reviewer Barbara Barnett, who had been linking to Amazon Unbox episodes of "House" as part of her reviews.

Over at HuffPo, writer-director John Sayles gives an interview with Bob Eisele about unions, the entertainment industry, the strike and how the changing world of Internet delivery is intersecting with the consolidation of huge corporations:What we have today are fewer unionized workers, especially if you don't count public service workers, than you've ever had before. And the movie industry is

Tonight, I received a call from Larry Gelbart. Technically, it was Robot Larry Gelbart, via an automated call system. (During the strike authorization process, I received a call from Robot Stephen Gaghan.) Larry's message dealt with the rumors and media reports of the past 48 hours. His advice: "Lay them aside and pick up a picket sign."

We will try to bring you the full text of his message. (

Send Pencils to Support the Writers! A Buck a Box!

.paypal-element {padding:0 0 5px 0;}What TV show are you supporting? (Optional)

Thanks to Gary Greenberg.

I'm not only a writer, I'm a GE shareholder! And I think GE's CEO Jeff Immelt deserves a lot of credit for telling the truth yesterday: The strike is hurting NBC. The negative buzz about NBC's fortunes had built for days, and Jeff Immelt faced it directly with a minimum of spin:While some media companies have denied the "Hollywood" writers' strike will hurt profits short-term, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said Tuesday that it's already having an impact at NBC Universal--and GE cut profit projections for the fourth quarter there. ... GE had projected a 10% to 15% growth in segment profit at its NBCU unit in the fourth quarter, but Tuesday Immelt said it will come in at the 10% low end, citing the "impact of the strike." ...

Picketing is long and tedious work. It's not something that any of us want to be doing, and after a few weeks of it, it's natural to ask, "Is this doing any good?"

Yes, it is.

Everyone's already heard that the AMPTP is returning to the table to negotiate with us, and a big part of the reason for that is the labor stoppage. Today, MediaWeek is telling a new side of the story. The strike is about to hit the TV networks in the wallet:

Media buyers, in light of the Writers Guild of America strike, say they might be a month away from asking the broadcast networks to renegotiate their upfront packages or give them cash back.

The networks have a clock on them, and the experts don't think reality programs will be able to bail out their schedules:

National Pubic Radio does a lot of those person on the street interviews with prospective primary voters, and while they are not good for my blood pressure, they force me to confront an inconvenient truth. Here are the Republican voters I've heard recently:

• A guy whose number one priority is getting the U.S. out of Iraq. He has decided to vote for John McCain because McCain's a military veteran, and that means he's the guy who knows how to end the war and bring the troops home. One major problem with that theory is that McCain has absolutely no intention of bringing the troops home. On the contrary, he says that he doesn't mind if they stay there for 100 years.
• A woman who says that she's going to vote for Mitt Romney because "he's a committed Christian, and he isn't ashamed of it." Uh, lady -- I've got news for you.
  

Below is a press release from the WGAE about the completion of the Pencils2MediaMoguls fan campaign today in New York. -JA

For the last couple of months, television fans have been buying pencils to send to the media moguls – the heads of six major companies that dominate the AMPTP – to demonstrate their support for the writers of their favorite TV series. On December 11, the first 500,000

As the strike continues and things heat up around the DGA negotiations, apparently the multi-national media mega-corps and their $100K a month crisis management flaks are ramping up their online psy-ops and misinformation campaigns.

Deadline Hollywood Daily, in a post detailing a range of less than savory actions taken by AMPTP members against WGA supporters, reported that "AMPTP staffers,

I'm happy to announce that the 18th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference will be held in New Haven from May 20-23, 2008. The theme this year is U.S. technology policy for the next administration. Here is the call for proposals:

COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY: TECHNOLOGY POLICY '08
http://cfp2008.org/
18th Annual CFP conference
May 20-23, 2008
Omni Hotel
New Haven, CT

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

This election year will be the first to address US technology policy in the information age as part of our national debate. Candidates have put forth positions about technology policy and have recognized that it has its own set of economic, political, and social concerns. In the areas of privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and freedom of speech, an increasing number of issues once confined to experts now penetrate public conversation. Our decisions about technology policy are being made at a time when the architectures of our information and communication technologies are still being built. Debate about these issues needs to be better-informed in order for us to make policy choices in the public interest.

Independent producers are not the final "P".
Over 80 producers, in a letter to the LA Times, have asked the press to correct and clarify the use of the term "producer" when referring to the AMPTP.

In their closing paragraph they state:
"It serves the studios’ interests to pretend to represent individual producers instead of corporate entities. We would ask that you, as responsible members of the media, stop abetting this charade and call upon your reporters to cease equating independent producers (who are not negotiators or direct stakeholders in this process, and the vast majority of whom side with the writers) with international conglomerates."

In response to the controversy over Scott McClellan's new book What Happened, which disclosed that the Bush engaged in a propaganda campaign to push the United States into war, Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay lay out what actually happened, using sources and articles available at the time.

The media, they point out, have little excuse for having been misled either about the Administration's motives or about the strength of the case for war. The evidence was available; but the media simply didn't want ask the Administration tough questions about its war plans in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. At the moment when a strong independent media was necessary, most of it failed the country. Many members of Congress refused to support the Administration's call for war, and protests were held around the country. But the press downplayed the opposition.

(The following is a post from WGA member Kevin Droney. The man made it through the '88 strike, and he knows his facts and figures.)

Why Production Crews Should Be Cheering On the Writers

I’ve talked with a few IA guys over the past few days, and they were generally unaware of a few things in their own contracts with the Alliance. To whit:

1) Their unions, including I.A.T.S.E., IBT Local 399, Studio Utility Employees Local 724, IBEW Local 40, Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 78, and the Plasterers & Cement Masons Local 755… ALL RECEIVE RESIDUALS.
2) These residual payments go directly into their PENSION AND HEALTH FUND.
3) RESIDUALS earned working on shows CONSTITUTE 55% OF THEIR P & H.
4) If there are funding surpluses from residuals, retirees receive a 13th and a 14th check in that year, instead of the normal twelve.

You knew he wouldn't remain quiet for much longer.

Hank Steinbrenner (pictured) has been shooting his mouth off again about the Red Sox, and this time he's gotten into a pissing contest with Jonathan Papelbon. Today's NY Post has an article about how Pap said that Hankenstein should "stick to pencil-pushing." So Boss Jr. fired back by calling Papelbon "a mouse."

It's apparent that Hankenstein has a Red Sox obsession, as he's said little about the dustup his club had with the Tampa Bay Rays over the past week, but when the subject of the Sox comes up, he can't wait to open his yapper and insert his foot there. His rivals seem to know how to push his buttons, and Papelbon, who's never shy about expressing his opinions, did just that. The article: http://www.nypost.com/seven/03152008/sports/yankees/owner__bosox_closer_a_mouse_102071.htm