SAG-AFTRA Strike

People don't like the streamers. The only company with any good will left is Netflix, which even I am less than enthusiastic about since it canned the woman who made the highbrow halo productions for someone green-lighting middle of the road, dumbed-down fare, the kind that caused the networks to lose market share to the cable companies, especially pay cable, like HBO. AND WE'RE PAYING FOR STREAMING!

At first cable providers were the most hated corporations in America. Then the major record labels. I won't say that streamers are number three, but they've been hurt by focusing on what Wall Street wants as opposed to what their customers want. But it's even worse. The people who run these outlets are grossly overpaid. Tell me how Zaslav makes triple-digit millions while cutting production and telling HBO viewers they're second class citizens. Does he think we don't know all this? Following entertainment is like following sports, people know the players and their maneuvers, and the end result does not look pretty.

Amazon... People hate the company anyway. But if you sign up for a streaming outlet via the Prime app...good luck figuring out how to cancel. Re the FTC lawsuit, the response has been that if companies make it too easy to cancel, people might cancel by accident. This is the kind of insane gobbledygook that turns customers against companies. Furthermore, it's not that hard to ask again if the subscriber wants to cancel, that's normally how computers work. You go to delete and it asks you if you're sure. But Amazon, et al, know better? Give me a break.

Apple... Highbrow product dripped-out over months. And they just raised the price. I won't pay. It's an insult, no matter how much I love and am part of the Apple ecosystem.

Disney? A dearth of new product. It's child fare and "Star Wars" stuff. I mean really?

Paramount and Peacock... Really? You want me to pay for this stuff? I've got to be the most avid TV addict to pony up. These outlets are like auto dealerships filled with old cars with crank windows and no A/C. There's no there there.

Furthermore, it's all Balkanized. Like being pecked to death by ducks. Quote me an overall price, for everything. This is what saved the music business. Certainly not the major labels, but Daniel Ek, who wouldn't even launch in America until he had all three majors on board. He was worried about the customer first. And you can naysay all you want, but Daniel Ek single-handedly saved the recorded music business. The majors certainly couldn't do it. They were inured to the past. Ek incentivized the labels with stock, which in some cases was promptly sold. Think about that...you don't even believe in the future of your distributor. You're so myopic, it's about today's bottom line as opposed to the future's.

As for hating the major record labels... This has stopped, because everybody can play. The tools of creation and distribution are in the hands of the consumer, and marketing is too. As for online promotional outlets like TikTok...that's where the youth spend their time, that's the main competition for streamers. But the elements of TikTok that adhere it to its audience? The big swinging dicks in streaming don't want to employ them: honest, authenticity, credibility... Mindless escapism? There's an audience for that, but that's not what's propping up TikTok, humanity and creativity are propping up TikTok.

As for unions...

There's a renaissance.

Apple and Amazon fighting unionization is a bad look. Especially when Apple is worth three trillion. The little people should be left out? But it's the little people who sustain your business, the customer. Ignore the customer at your peril. And working at the Amazon warehouse is like being in prison. Amazon is on the verge of running out of available workers who have not already worked for the company. It's like today's "Wall Street Journal," the pompous writer who said Florida's anti-immigration law problems will be solved by the market. Yeah, when you pay farm and service workers twenty or thirty dollars an hour, which they're never going to do, hell, the minimum wage in the Sunshine State is eleven bucks. Truth is so many of these jobs the immigrants do American citizens don't want to. The work is too dirty, too intense and too poorly-paid for them to be incentivized. Ever pick crops? I have, it's back-breaking, almost any job is better.

So what we have here is an elite that believe their sh*t doesn't stink and they're better than us. That they earned their status and their riches. Rubbish, it's all on the back of us, the public, the consumers, and you constantly want to screw us in the process.

Bankers... What exactly do they add?

Private equity. You buy, lay debt on the company and frequently it crashes under said debt, even though you made money! People lose their jobs, but you come out smelling like a rose. This is the story of Warner Bros. Discovery. The company is loaded up with tens of billions in debt. Which didn't exist until AT&T decided to buy Warner Bros. and... You must pay. Wall Street must be served. Zaslav cut foreign TV production. Meaning you won't see no "Squid Game" on Max.

The tide has turned. Income inequality... We've felt powerless for years. Give us an opportunity and we take action.

That reporter saying Threads is the new Google+... Yes, this was said in the "New York Times," how ignorant can you be? People didn't have a problem with Facebook, they didn't need Google+, thus it failed. But people HATE Elon Musk and his Twitter experience, otherwise triple-digit millions wouldn't have signed up for Threads. Sans Musk's purchase of Twitter, Threads is dead on arrival. But that guy...

Doesn't matter if you feel differently. Believe me, my inbox is filled with people citing the Twitter Files and all kinds of b.s. to defend Twitter and Musk. I won't even bother going into the details, but the truth is in the number of Threads signups, people were dissatisfied with Twitter. And the truth is users want content moderation. And if you look into the Twitter Files you'll find no smoking gun, Twitter's regulators were dealing with both Democrats and Republicans looking for moderation, and wrestling with what to do. But no, we must have FREEDUMB!

You don't have the freedom to yell FIRE! in a crowded auditorium.

No one has unlimited freedom, even though these rich bozo elites think they do, that they're above the law.

What Musk and his minions want is chaos, so the truth can't out, and so they can control the narrative.

So just like with Twitter you've got all these anti-union people with loud voices. But the average citizen... They're on the other side. They wish they were a member of a union. That they had greater pay and protection. And sure, you can point out flaws in past unions, but... This is another thing that drives me crazy, the bad apples in the Democratic party are held up as evidence that the whole party must be thrown out with the bathwater. There are bad actors everywhere. Even you have made mistakes. But politicians can't even admit them, for fear of being excoriated by the party police. Just like we can't have new taxes.

Of course the streamers have costs. But should the actors pay for the streamers' overproduction? What a concept, we overspend and then we're rescued. Everybody in America would sign up for that, but it's not offered. We're supposed to be responsible. But when corporations screw up? It's our money that bails them out! Keeping the airlines in business. The subsidies to oil and gas companies. Carried interest benefits for billionaire hedge funders. But nothing can change, that's the America we now live in. Gridlock. While in other countries they build roads and other infrastructure and... You want the fire department to show up, the police too. You want to drive on the roads. But you shouldn't have to pay for it? That's what taxes pay for. As for waste... Even you waste. You've purchased products you haven't used. But the government should be held to a higher standard?

America is angry. And as James Carville famously said, "It's the economy, stupid." Everybody is worried about their finances. We're dying to stick it to the man. And when we get the option, we salivate and act. That's what the migration to Threads was all about.

Should SAG-AFTRA get everything it wants? The WGA? Of course not. There should be honest negotiation, which has yet to happen. The landscape changed. There are buyouts, no residuals, shorter production schedules. But it's all dependent on the workers at the bottom of the pyramid. The streamers can't excise them, they're the fuel that makes the operation run.

I mean really.

As for the public being unwilling to forgo Hollywood, and therefore being on the streamers'/producers' side? There's tons of entertainment out there already. People are not willing to throw everybody under the bus to get momentary satisfaction. Hell, jobs were shipped overseas... This is what the blue collar backlash is all about. The left helped eliminate their jobs but did not protect them for the future. As for the right, their solution is to own the libs, which is no solution at all. We all need progress. We all need to come to the table. All this hogwash about everyone needing to be self-reliant is just that, hogwash. Shi*t happens, which is why you need the government. Which is why you need health insurance, but you think you're immune. Same deal with car insurance. Everybody thinks the problem won't happen to them, and then it does.

You'll want more pay. You'll want more job security. These union fights are for you, don't ever forget it.


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