On the last episode of ‘The Daily Show’ before the Writers Guild of America’s strike, Jon Stewart attempted to clear up just why screenwriters were stepping away from their jobs.

‘The writers would like to get paid on what’s called new media, the Internet and such,’ Stewart said. ‘And the corporations are saying ‘It’s too new. We don’t know if we make money or not. We can’t pay anything.”

Then, in true ‘Daily Show’ fashion of pointing out the hypocrisy of the moment, Stewart directed the audience to thedailyshow.com where clips from every episode are available for free, supported by advertising dollars that go directly into the pockets of Comedy Central and its parent company, Viacom.

It’s that kind of corporate hypocrisy that has kept the writers’ strike going for almost a month now and has put several of America’s favorite shows in jeopardy or completely out of production. ‘The Office’ is already out of new episodes. ‘Lost’ has only completed shooting about half of its episodes for next season. Late-night talk shows such as ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’ went off the air as soon as the strike began.

The WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers resumed closed-door negotiations Monday to resolve the dispute, but no signs of change have been reported yet.

As viewers, it’s easy to criticize the WGA for keeping us from watching our favorite TV shows. After all, they’re just a bunch of yuppie, upper-middle class writers who spew out witty dialogue for a living. But the important thing to remember is that many of them depend on residual income from reruns and DVD sales to make their living. If production on a show ends for the summer or the series is canceled by the network, writers may depend on residuals for months or even years before they find new work.

Now that the Internet is changing the way we watch TV, whether it’s through downloads on iTunes or free streaming video on a network’s Web site, there is far greater potential for writers to earn more for the content they create. And for now, the big media companies are keeping all this money for themselves, using the content their writers create to augment their already exuberant incomes.

These are the same companies that are filing $1 billion lawsuits against Google for hosting copyrighted content on YouTube. If Google can’t display someone else’s content for free and make money from advertisements, why is it OK for the big media companies to do the same with the content created by their own writers?

The biggest victims of the strike are the set crews who are usually the lowest paid members of a production team. Despite the risk they take by going weeks without pay, even the production employees are behind the strike. As members of unions themselves, they understand the importance of keeping the balance of power in check.

In the eyes of the general public, the WGA strike will just be seen as a minor annoyance and a disruption to the prime time TV schedule, especially if more shows continue to shut down and the networks are forced to flood our screens with trashy reality shows. (‘American Gladiators’ is coming to NBC early next year with Hulk Hogan as the host. If that’s not a formula for success, I don’t know what is.) In the meantime, be patient. Your TV isn’t going anywhere.

Steven Kovach is a biweekly columnist for The Daily Orange. He can be reached at sjkovach@gmail.com.

Published on November 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm