Take a good, good look...

That's right...take a good, good look at these photos...photos of some of Big Media's biggest powers at the top.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings...

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav...

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts...

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish...

Disney CEO Bob Iger...

Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch...

Yes, I'm going to ruffle a bunch of feathers for saying this...but I'm going to say it:

If it weren't for (let's face it) corporate greed and for complacency at the top (in other words, the studios' tremendous reliance on movie franchises, movie remakes, and TV reboots), the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists wouldn't be out on strike. It's the first time since 1960 that both unions shut down.

Not all actors are wealthy. Matter of fact, the average California actor earned $27.73 per hour in 2022, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And movie-TV performers aren't paid full-time year-'round. And, per a 7-17-2023 post on cnn.com on why the writers and performers are picketing, 12.7% of all SAG-AFTRA members make an annual salary of $26,470...the minimum amount that qualifies an entertainer for health insurance.

160,000 SAG-AFTRA members...11,000 people in the WGA.

I still think that there's more than enough money out there to satisfy all sides in the matter. How about you?

The strike must continue

The Writers Guild of America began its current strike on Tuesday, 5-2-2023...after a three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended. Weeks of negotiations fell through because the AMPTP failed to come up with a pact that would satisfy the 11,500 WGA members. WGA leaders sought to gain increased compensation for TV-and-movie writers, guaranteed duration of employment for writers who get gigs in the industry, better residuals, and (of course!) the assurance that human writers wouldn't get replaced by artificial intelligence. Streaming has become a major factor since the previous WGA strike. Because of streaming, residuals for writers have become less frequent...and smaller, too. We've now got minirooms (with only a few writers instead of the usual seven or more), shorter seasons for TV series, and no rerun residuals for countless series. The money's there to give WGA writers what they want. Writers would've gained an extra $429 million per year had AMPTP leaders come through for the folks who cook up scripts. Instead, AMPTP bigwigs offered an annual increase of $86 million. Some people have questioned the WGA's decision to shut it down. One of them's even on the creatives' platform I joined in January 2019. If you've questioned the first writers' shutdown since 2007-08, think about this: Shows like "This Is Us" and "Abbott Elementary" wouldn't have come on the air if somebody hadn't thought them up...and movies such as "Avatar" and "Tar" came about because someone wrote a script. And why shouldn't writers be compensated decently for what they come up with? They've got bills to pay, too.

It's been such a long, long time...

57.5 years, to be exact.

It's been that long since I began wearing glasses. (Back then, the fall of 1965, when my constant squinting led to the decision to get me into my first pair of glasses.)

Well...thanks to two cataract surgeries (3-6-2023 and 3-27-2023), subsequent followups, and two bottles of Pred-Brom, I now see 20/20 for distance. Don't need glasses for driving anymore.

Okay...I still need reading glasses when I'm looking at books, newspapers, magazines, and computer screens.

Still, that's good enough for me.

Brumm Eye Center and Miracle Hills Surgery Center, thank you so very much!