Striking Writers March On Wall Street

A spokesman for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the former actor plans to speak with producers’ representatives to see if he can help resolve the strike. The governor spoke with writers’ representatives a day earlier.

“The purpose is to see if there’s something the state can do to be helpful,” said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger.

Writers have been on strike since Nov. 5th over payments for films and TV shows viewed on the Internet.

McLear said Schwarzenegger was not sure how far the state can participate in negotiations, since federal labor officials would have to take the lead in mediating between the two sides.

The governor has also assigned staff members to meet with federal mediators.

In New York Tuesday, striking television and film writers marched on Wall Street, waving signs reading “Pens Down” and “We won’t even write slogans.”

“CEOs brag to Wall Street about how much money they are making through new media … but cry poverty to the writers who are making them rich,” said a flier the picketers handed out near the New York Stock Exchange.

The picketers were targeting such media conglomerates as Viacom Inc., which owns Comedy Central and MTV; News Corp., owner of the Fox TV and film studios; CBS Corp.; The Walt Disney Co. and others.

“It seems like the heads of the studios like to come to Wall Street and say how much money they’re making online,” said Seth Meyers, head writer on “Saturday Night Live” and co-anchor 고스톱사이트 of SNL’s “Weekend Update.” “Right now, no one has to be Nostradamus to know that in three years, everyone’s going to be watching television in a totally different way.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing TV and film producers, had no immediate comment, a representative said Tuesday.

“Those opportunities, from a revenue perspective, are still relatively nascent,” he said. Begley estimated that less than 5 percent of broadcast networks’ revenues come from digital sources.

Writers get paid when TV episodes and films are downloaded from Internet stores or when episodes or films are rented online, but writers believe they aren’t being paid enough for online sales and rentals. Writers do not get paid when TV shows are streamed for free on advertising-supported network sites such as ABC.com or Hulu.com.

As in previous days, some big names showed up on the picket line including actor and writer Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti on “The Sopranos.”

2Writers from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” set up a mock news desk at the scene and filmed a spoof newscast on the strike. With television production shut down, they planned to post the video online.

In Los Angeles, dozens of actors turned up to picket after the Screen Actors Guild told its members that, while they still had to turn up for work, they could show solidarity with striking writers. Zach Braff, star of NBC’s “Scrubs,” Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman, Lily Tomlin and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were among those joining the marchers.

“On our crew alone, 200 people will be out of work next week, just in time for the holidays,” said Braff. “It’s about egos now. They’ve got to get back to the bargaining table.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and guild member Tony Kushner said that whatever the networks’ profits, the writers just want to be certain they’ll have a share.

“If they don’t make money off of it, then we won’t make money off of it. If they do make money off of it, we should make money off of it,” Kushner said. “We’d have to live for a very long time with the consequences of backing down.”

Kushner said he stopped working on a screenplay with Steven Spielberg when the strike was called.