Gothamist: Interview w/ Daily Show scribe John Oliver
excerpts:
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Someone from the WGA, I think it was the president, said the strike could go on for nine months. I did not hear that. To be honest I find brinksmanship like that difficult to stomach and it makes both sides sound equally bad. They’re playing games with people’s lives at the moment, and I’m not even talking about the writers. On The Daily Show we have a staff who are very concerned at the moment about losing their jobs – researchers, P.A.s, etc. – and I find talk like that quite difficult to stomach. I understand they’re trying to play some kind of brinksmanship game but that doesn’t make it any less difficult to hear when friends of mine who live paycheck to paycheck are being seriously affected by this strike. And they don’t even stand to benefit from any of the negotiations!
[...]
Has anyone not part of the Writers Guild done anything that’s been less than supportive? Not that I’m aware of. There has been criticism in the press of Ellen DeGeneres because she’s still working, but I would not join in with that because she’s protecting her staff who depend on her. It’s an untenable position for everyone.
[..]
The writers from The Office were talking about how they wrote some web-only “promotionals” for the show and there was ad revenue generated from those and the writers weren’t paid any residuals. That’s right. Or, like, all our Daily Show clips were pulled off YouTube by Viacom, who is suing them for a billion dollars. That was not at our instigation – we were happy for people to watch the clips. But instead they wanted to set up a website where they can sell advertising while the clip is buffering, although I thought we were at the point where clips don’t need to buffer anymore. So you have to watch a commercial for thirty seconds or whatever. So they’re clearly making money on that; they’re also clearly making money because they’re suing YouTube for a billion. So that seems quite strange when they’re saying, “Well, there’s no money to be made off the internet but we’re suing YouTube for a billion dollars.” That takes spectacular balls! There are so many areas of it that seem so desperately unfair.
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