The writers' strike bleeds on, but now even money-grubbers on Wall Street have said it wouldn't be a big deal to give the WGA everything they're asking for. Bear Stearns issued a statement saying that complete capitulation would have a negligible effect on their coffers, in a report on Mediapost.com (you'll need to register to see it).
"From Wall Street's perspective, we estimate the impact of accepting the [writers'] proposal is largely negligible," Bear Stearns wrote in a report last week.
The firm estimates that the $120 million figure would carry an average impact of less than 1% on annual earnings per share for the media companies. That does not factor in any concessions by the writers' side (the WGA), where the principal issue is a desire for a piece of ad dollars from new-media distribution.
The potentially small financial impact suggests that studios (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers) are more concerned about setting a precedent in new-media revenue sharing. However, Bear Stearns wrote that the writers' forecast for that market "strikes us as fairly aggressive." The firm hinted that studios are looking to the future. They are concerned that a favorable settlement would embolden directors and actors in their coming renegotiations.
So the implication here is that the AMPTP isn't that concerned about how much they'll be paying their writers. They just don't want actors and directors, who are more famous and thus more important in the business, to get ballsy and demand more, because they'll get it.
That kind of says that they're jerks.
