I don’t know why any company would push an employee into a long commute if it’s not necessary.
I mean, they aren’t. Unless you are dealing with something like being a housekeeper for a rich neighborhood, most bosses would love it if you lived within 30 minutes of the office.
But the reality of the housing problem is that you MIGHT be able to afford an apartment near the office. But if you want to “put down roots”, you are living on the outskirts of town. And if you look at something like the insanity that is The Bay Area, “the outskirts of town” seems to move by 10-100 miles every few years.
And… it is real shitty, but that is part of the push for hybrid schedules. If you live three hours away from the office then nobody will ever want to call you in. But… sometimes they can’t help it. And now they have the mess of “Well, The V lives 3 hours away so do we have to pay them? We don’t pay Susie who lives 30 minutes away and it isn’t fair to her that she has to spend an extra five hours a day in the office… But we also can’t give The V what is effectively a day off every time they have an in person meeting…” So the “hope” is that people will… sell their houses and go back to getting exploited by a slum lord?
“It’s an old Disney scam where they slightly rename a series to reset contract terms back to first season,” DeKnight wrote on X/Twitter. “Needs to be addressed by all the guilds/unions and crushed!”
While I am not a fan of the historic tendency for Disney (and I think also Nickelodean?) to use soft reboots and spinoff shows to keep shows in certain budgetary brackets:
That is a horrible idea. Tying contracts to continuity is just a giant mess that actively discourages even stuff like The Good Place/Parks and Rec/Brooklyn 99 where there are vague references to each show in a way that you can kind of pretend they are all the same universe. Instead, it means that studios would be even less likely to work with a popular show runner for fear of triggering “continuity”
In theory: The current model “works”. I would hope Charlie Cox was able to negotiate a strong paycheck for himself. Same with Dinofrio. Because they were almost universally praised for Netflix Daredevil and it doesn’t really matter if this is Earth-616 or Earth -617. If your show was successful then you are in a very good position to negotiate for the sequel series (… and that is how you get a spinoff with the little brother somehow becoming President because the lead actress wanted too much money)
In reality? Daredevil Season 1 was largely praised and like the first two thirds of Season 2 were almost universally praised. The last third of Season 2 was a shitshow that was setting up the tie-in show, which was god awful, and Season 3 (?) was a mess from top to bottom. Maybe you can blame a lot of that on the show runners (we sure as hell won’t blame the execs…), but it greatly “devalues” the performers. Which… is arguably by design. Same with Deborah Ann Woll who, weird “I guess I’ll just strip so we can get some naked upper back in the series premier” aside, consistently became the heart and soul of TWO of the Netflix shows and more or less redeemed one of the top 100 most problematic characters in Marvel history. And Idle Hands kid wasn’t completely horrible.
And… I honestly don’t know how to handle that. Just because someone was hired in season 1 doesn’t mean they need the biggest paycheck on the crew. Just like someone who showed up two seasons ago but became THE standout star doesn’t deserve to get paid shit. The hope would be for more Friends like collective bargaining but… sometimes you have stuff like Mythbusters where Adam and Jaime were very much “work friends” or stuff like Castle where Stana Katic and Nathan FIllion will be the chief suspect if the other ends up dead.
Similarly: Sometimes a soft reboot is good. Look at all the people who will INSIST you need to watch Supernatural from episode 1 even though we all acknowledge Season 1 is nothing like the rest of the series and the show itself more or less completely changed premises and genres three or four times.
But… those are also what are historically used to break the bargaining power of a “show”.
Here is a tip: If you want to have a conversation with someone, don’t open up with calling them a liar because clearly anything that is not your world view must be a lie. It is a toxic mindset to begin with and just makes people not want to deal with you.
Also, I have no idea how any of that applies to what I said above. While I assume he got a decent paycheck, I am pretty sure Ted Danson wasn’t paid as though he had been on Frasier for 11 seasons when he did his cameos as Sam.
Yeah… never trust any budgetary data coming out of “hollywood”. Hollywood Accounting is a thing and it mostly boils down to shifting expenditures and cooking the books to maximize profits for the studios while minimizing payouts for the talent.
Just apply a bit of common sense here: Studios make money off of film releases. They have a few in the can, as it were, but are rapidly running out. The SAG+WGA strike means they can’t make any new releases (unless they were already set up to mostly be overseas production companies). You can argue that you are saving money for Q2 but Q3 is going to be a bloodbath.
The old days of “one syndicated sitcom” setting people up for life have been gone for a while. But this is just particularly egregious and is a big part of why (last I checked) the studios were willing to concede on AI (revisit that in a few years) but not streaming residuals.
And I do understand there is at least some concern over people being able to game the system. The cast of Friends are loaded because TBS will never stop showing reruns of that show. Same with the cast of Cheers and so forth. And a lot of that is because “hollywood” likes the crew and writers of those shows and are basically doing kickbacks. Seriously, look up the production crew for Friends. Hell, look at Fran Drescher. She is an anti-vax nutjob but is also a straight up G in terms of negotiating power for SAG. And The Nanny (or whatever god awful show she was on) was never good but she had enough friends and connections that it gets the rerun treatment.
So under the tv model? The “right people” are getting paid.
Under streaming? People might suddenly realize how incredibly good season 1 of Human Target was (let’s not talk about Season 2… aside from the rather problematic but still appreciated Janet Montgomery eye candy. And the final sequence where Chance rushes to rescue Indira Varma was good) and suddenly Mark, Chi, and Jackie are wondering if someone is scamming them because of the residuals checks that showed up in their mailboxes. Or a social media aware actor or writer runs a campaign to encourage people to “just leave whatever shitty USA spy show Sarah Shahi was on before POI on in the background”.
And now the “wrong people” might actually get paid.
This is also a big part of why it is being normalized for shows to be taken off of streaming services. Because this is a losing battle for the studios. But they will be “fine” with paying residuals… if it goes to the people they want it to. So rather than run the risk of the wrong shows or movies being watched too often? Just get rid of them after their “run”.
All that being said: Really, Suits? For fuck’s sake there are so many better shows out there.
This has been known for decades (probably as long as the 5 day work week has been a thing)
And this is “fine”. Because not everyone has the same slack day. Hell, at my current job, me and a buddy outright acknowledge this and he takes the brunt on Fridays when I am just done with everything and I do Mondays when he is usually distracted with whatever his kids told him they need last minute.
Same with meetings. Some weeks, the ONLY thing I do on a wednesday is go to a few meetings. Or maybe me and someone else set a friday lunch meeting because that is the only time we both have a chance, and so forth.
For people who have “real jobs” where they actually work hard (so retail, construction, etc): You tend to not get the “easy” day for the most part. You are busting your ass and being overworked all week long.
For office workers and the like? I think there should be a lot of thought put in. Someone doing data entry might not need to be there all five days. Someone who is doing more design/planning role… we already end up working closer to 6. And efforts toward “flex time” and just general “We don’t care when you are ‘at work’ so long as you are available for meetings and get stuff done” go a long way toward that. Because, for example: I busted my ass for what amounts to a 20 hour shift yesterday getting stuff working for a customer. Today? I am basically checking my email but made it clear that even that is “I might not answer”. And I’ll probably take a few afternoons off next week to even it out.
But, with the shit world we live in: that would map to people who “don’t have to work all 5 days” getting paid 20% less. So pretending you are busy on a Friday afternoon is probably still the better option.
Yup. The police have always existed to beat on the downtrodden. Whether it is slaves trying to escape to freedom or workers who are peacefully protesting just a bit too loud.
Bosses and workers still can’t agree on whether the commute is part of the work day, and it’s creating a $578 billion productivity problem ( fortune.com )
Original ‘Daredevil’ Showrunner Calls Out ‘Disney Scam’ of Naming New Series ‘Daredevil: Born Again’: It ‘Resets Contract Terms Back to First Season’ ( variety.com )
“It’s an old Disney scam where they slightly rename a series to reset contract terms back to first season,” DeKnight wrote on X/Twitter. “Needs to be addressed by all the guilds/unions and crushed!”
'Suits' Was Streamed For 3 Billion Minutes on Netflix and the Writers Were Collectively Paid $3,000 ( nofilmschool.com )
The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Major 4-day workweek study suggests that when we work 5 days we spend one doing basically nothing ( www.msn.com )
I think the rich need a reminder... ( lemmy.world )