If you’re like me you knew there was a writers’ strike but didn’t really understand what it was about. It finally made sense to me after reading about it on Jenna Fischer’s blog and watching the YouTube video she links to, which shows Greg Daniels, Ryan, Kelly, Mose, and Toby on the picket line (they are all writers on the show).
The gist of it is that contracts were written in a time before the Internet and before TV shows were sold on DVD. So when someone watches a show on NBC.com, for example, the network considers that promotional material and gets to keep nearly all the ad revenue (whereas the writers/actors get paid whenever a show is rerun on TV). Similarly, the networks keep nearly all the proceeds of DVD sales. Ten years from now, digital downloads and DVDs could very likely be the main ways people watch television shows, and it’s not exactly fair that the networks get to keep all that cash for themselves.
And if that’s wrong, then I guess I still don’t understand it after all.