Writers gain a piece of online revenues

While writers and studio executives await the results of today’s vote to end the WGA television strike, industry pontificators are opining on the settlement package, particularly as it relates to digital media.

Writers may not have won every item on their wish list, but most commentators agree that they scored a crucial win in getting compensation for future online and digital content.

“Never mind the percentages, fees and rerun royalties. By gaining jurisdiction over any original material Hollywood produces for the Internet, the Writers Guild of America has ensured its survival,” Lacey Rose wrote today on Forbes.com.

"It's a toe-hold,” writer Charlie Craig (X-Files, Eureka) told Rose. “[W]e placed a flag on the Internet… We claimed part of it as our own, and that's a gain for the future. This deal may have saved the guild from becoming irrelevant.”

According to industry projections, video streaming revenue and video downloading revenue is expected to reach $3 billion and $1 billion by 2010 and 2011, respectively, Forbes.com reported. Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicts that within the next five years nearly half of the total industry growth will be generated through Web and wireless technologies.

The strike by the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW), the two labor unions representing film, television and radio writers working in the United States, has toiled since November 5, 2007.