The Media Equation: Living Paycheck To Paycheck Was Already A Way Of Life

Bradford Winters, a screenwriter who lives and works in New York, came home very animated after walking the picket line last Monday, the first day of the Writers Guild of Americas strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

It was actually pretty upbeat, he said as he sat in his third floor walk-up in Brooklyn. There was music, I saw people I knew and there was a spirit in the air.

But he said that on Monday night, when he read that the studios chief negotiator believed that the strike could last nine months, he gulped long and hard.

Between the superstar writer-producers who earn millions (the so-called show runners) and the bitter hanger on-er who sold a spec script eight years ago lies a vast swath of working writers like Mr. Winters who earn a decent but not spectacular living by making people laugh or cry.

That not-so-silent majority argues that the DVD residuals and share of digital revenues they are seeking could play a critical role in smoothing out the bumps and providing a kind of R&D money to finance that next wonderful thing.

Mr. Winters, who is 36, drew his last paycheck in February when the show he was working on, Six Degrees, was canceled by ABC. He has been writing television for 10 years, so he knows that dry spells are part of the racket. His wife, Tracy, is trained as an immigration lawyer, but she is not working as she has her hands happily full with Ruby, 3, and Penelope, 21 months old.

The three were on their way out last Friday night because Ruby had cooked up some caper that involved taking lemons to a guy named Fred across the street. It sounded like the beginning of a nice bit of television dramedy, which, for the time being, is the only one being written at the Winterss household.

Before he was married four years ago, Mr. Winters had a great run writing for Oz, the prison drama on HBO produced by the Levinson/Fontana Company. Oz was a hit in cable terms. It ran six seasons, and has since enjoyed a second life on DVD. But since the show ended, the gigs have come and gone for Mr. Winters. Other than a couple of random residual checks that ran in the low hundreds, his compensation ended when the show ended.

There is this myth that is being perpetuated about the greedy, rich writer who just wants more, he said, the apartment otherwise quiet now that his family had stepped out. I am not saying that writing television is not a lucrative business. It can be for those who are good at it and hit it big. But for a lot of us, it is very hit or miss. You ride the edge of the knife. A show gets picked up, it gets canceled, and then you are back looking for your next job.

He added: I have been extremely fortunate in working with Tom Fontana. Ive been able to make a living working with really smart people. Before the strike, he was developing a pilot for the Levinson/Fontana Company, and one of the companys shows had been picked up, but those efforts are at full stop.

Having done most of his work in cable, residual payments have never played a meaningful economic role in his career. Before cable exploded, the producers had made the now familiar argument that no one would make any money there, so the residuals are tiny.

I think it is a specious argument for the producers to say that they dont know if there will be profits in digital media, he said, taking a sip of water at the table below an overhanging loft in the apartment. It was the same argument that was used when DVDs and cable became part of the business, and time has proven that both of those were very lucrative businesses. If the studios dont make money on new media, we dont make money.

This is showbiz, after all, an often corrupt and occasionally lucrative business where everybody gets to dip a beak in. And the writers, after all, are only looking for single percentages of the huge mound of suet created by the big hits. In the current round of negotiations, producers are arguing that writers rank with craft services in terms of rights to that lucrative aftermarket.

Now that I am at a standstill, I have to face the question of what we as a family are doing and how we are going to do into the future, Mr. Winters said. I have to look into other avenues of putting bread on the table.

The writers effort to be dealt a share of any digital business seems like the right issue at precisely the wrong time. Both platforms and nightstands are lousy with content, and every consumer is also a potential producer. With user-assisted robots like Google and YouTube searching and dealing all manner of media, who needs writers?

Producers and networks are not feeling the heat because consequences, if there are any, will mostly come in the form of next years upfronts. In the meantime, they can make do with what is already in the can and fill up the rest of the time with retread reality like the comeback of American Gladiator.

We are not the ones who are going to lose our houses, one producer told Entertainment Weekly.

Mr. Winters and his family are not about to become homeless, but his rent in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn is pretty steep. A graduate in creative writing and English literature from Stanford, he is also a poet, a craft not likely to see DVD residuals any time soon.

He fell into writing television after his brothers, who are both actors, introduced him to Mr. Fontana. He loves the work. To have your work go into living rooms and reach millions is a thrill that you never get tired of, he said. And he is thankful that he has been able to remain in New York and work, even though most of the industry lives and works in Los Angeles.

Less than a week into the strike, he has watched all the fiery rhetoric emanating from both sides and fears a settlement is a long way off. People can crack wise about writers holding out tin cups, but with the producers dug in and consumers with many other choices, he is genuinely worried.

Part of the reason that people have so much content on their DVRs and TiVos is that there has been so much really good writing, he added. Now people will be able to go back and see all that great television they missed.

Mr. Winters said he would be among them, catching up with the first season of Friday Night Lights. Hes looking forward to it, but hed rather be writing television than watching it.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com

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