The Writer's Guild strike has made watching TV a quagmire for me. My wife is in the WGA, and I am in SAG, so I want to make an ethical choice when it comes to my mindless entertainment. Our choice, it seems, is to either be legal, or to be ethical. Legally, we can watch shows off the network's websites. Ethically, I can steal from the networks, depriving them of revenue until they consent to share with the artists.

Here's the thing about TV now. I have no idea what time a show airs. I have no idea what network a show is on. I do have favorite shows - House, Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, Weeds, Curb Your Enthusiasm. But I have only the vaguest notion of where they occur on the TV dial ("dial"? Well, you could say "TV number pad", or "TV network selection module", but they don't have the same ring). The only brand I'm aware of is HBO. NBC? CBS? ABC? They're just interchangeable corporations that produce a flood of anonymous content with the occasional random standout. Widget makers. (Not to disparage widgets. I love widgets.)

I get TV shows in two ways. I TiVo them on my ReplayTV (I know, that's like "Scott-brand Kleenex") or I download them off of a Usenet newsgroup (more about how that works some other time). Are these legal and ethical? I know the second isn't legal. It's file sharing, plain and simple. The first? Well, I pay a monthly fee for the use of my DVR, and some of that goes to the networks - a copyright protection racket. Do the writers, actors, and directors get any of that? I don't think so. That makes it unethical.

The days when the hardest part of watching TV was getting someone to hold the antenna are long gone.

Of course, I could buy shows off of iTunes. But first, I don't have an iPod Video. If I absolutely have to have video in my pocket, I put it on my Palm TX, but iTunes purchases are locked into the iPodiverse. But, much more importantly, the writers don't get paid for my iTunes purchases! Until they do, I wouldn't even consider buying that.

ABC.com lets me watch full episodes, but the only ones I would even contemplate watching are Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, and Lost. Well-done shows, but not for me. Also, this is so-called "promotional" content, that the studio doesn't pay residuals for. And, lest you buy their "we aren't making money on the web" excuse, I had to watch an ad for Best Buy that I don't think was given away for free. I mean, come on! Any executive who suggests a revenue-free program would have an even shorter career than the average of 18 months. Every time the studio makes money, the artists should make money.

Another thing: ABC.com made me download a plug-in, which is a minor annoyance, and didn't solve any problems - for me, anyway. I don't know what it did for ABC. It might be spyware, for all I know. The streaming still stuttered at the beginning, and was no better than NBC.com's playback, which didn't need a special download.

NBC.com was more fun, only because I prefer their shows. The network (of course) also runs ads. But you can watch Bionic Woman, which works well with streaming video, because when it stutters, you don't know if it's the signal catching up with your player, or their lame "super-speed" effect (why is that so hard to do? Can anyone enlighten me? No, slo-mo does NOT make it look like she's running faster). 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, The Office, Heroes, all great shows. All making money online for the studios, and nothing, zip, nichevo, for the writers, actors, or directors. In other words, nothing for the folk directly responsible for the quality of the show.

CBS.com, the same, but with absolutely no shows I want to watch. Maybe, if I were forced at gunpoint to pick one, I would pick Big Bang Theory, not because it's very funny, but because I think it was secretly based on my life. Quite closely, actually, except that I was not a practicing scientist (I had been a Physics major, though). My roommate was a real-life mathematician. And the next door neighbor wasn't a pretty waitress, but an exotic dancer whose social skills were even more stunted than ours. Good times.

But I digress.

HBO.com will let you watch some episodes on line, but in a small window. Makes sense, since they are a subscription channel. And no ads! I think that could genuinely pass as "promotional". Comedy Central, too. I always preferred watching snippets of the Daily Show and Colbert to watching the whole show anyway, and they hold up quite well in a small low-quality window.

Here are some other sites for, or about, downloading video. I'm sure there are dozens more, but I can't do everything for you. How are you ever going to learn?

movieforumz.com - Good intro to the whole field. They suggest a few monthly-fee, unlimited download sites. They did have downloadable video, but their boards are closed. Whether for legal, financial, or technical reasons, I don't know.

stage6.divx.com - Downloadable or streaming video, in the popular DivX format. Not much in the way of current releases, but a lot of interesting, obscure stuff. International video, from Egypt, Pakistan, India, Italy and more. I found a copy of the animated feature Heavy Metal, which brought back a lot of memories, but was lousy quality, full of compression artifacts.

hulu.com - Doesn't seem to want me. It's in beta, and I applied, but they have ignored me. They are going to be (according to press releases) a video download site for professionally-produced internet-only content.

quicksilverscreen.com - Highly recommended. Fully movies in DivX format, very watchable in full screen mode.

joost.com - This requires a download, so it is a little like Second Life, in that it is an internet-based application, not done through your browser. Unlike ABC.com's mandatory download, this application offers its own interface and high quality streaming. It has advertising in a small window in the corner of the screen.

blip.tv - No TV shows, Blip.tv offers original content, mostly shorter.  High quality, great stuff you won't find elsewhere.  This is the kind of entrepreneurial writer-producing we may be seeing a lot more of.  Highly recommended.   

To sum up: The Pokey Little Puppy is a Little Golden Book that has sold 15 million copies for its corporate overmaster, Random House. The writer, Jannette Sebring Lowrey, was paid $75 in 1942. In constant dollars, that's about $942 now. I think that she should have been paid residuals, and shared in the phenomenal success of her work. But she didn't have a union to give her more negotiating clout.

Support the Writers. Support the WGA.

Peter Basch

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