Power Up Your Laptops, WGA!

A tentative deal was announced last night at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium between the Writer’s Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Negotiators are expected to sign off on the the agreement today, and then, according to EW.com, a finalized deal would be hammered out over the next 48 hours which would put the writers back to work.

In the Staticblog world view, the writers are getting something in line with their peers in other segments of the entertainment industry: they will receive residual payments for their content when it is made available online. From the beginning, my contention has been that script writers should get a deal roughly analogous to what songwriters have gotten for decades whenever their songs are played on the radio. The medium may be different, but the situation is the same.

Now, let’s spit out some more episodes of “Lost” and “The Office.”