Speaking to a Writers Guild audience in Beverly Hills on Thursday, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner called the current explosion of scripted content in television a “gold rush,” explaining that “you can make 10 episodes of anything, and you can sell it anywhere in the world.”

Appearing at the Writers Guild Theater as part of a pre-Emmys weekend panel with eight of the writers nominated this year, Weiner said that digital distribution and increasing international expansion have created a television industry in which “a fraction of the public can make AMC a billion dollars – that’s what this business model has meant.”

Of course, acclaimed shows such as Weiner’s Mad Men, whose followings grow over time and whose reputations ensure they will continue to be viewed across various platforms in perpetuity, have a greater chance at making that kind of money than others. But the point is, content can live forever now, and it can live anywhere, and the writers onstage seemed to mostly think that was a good thing for their side of the equation – with a few reservations. “Maybe you have to go to a new place to watch your content, but we’re in the Writers Guild; the more jobs, the better,” said Weiner.

Sure, but maybe those jobs aren’t as high-quality as they once were. “It’s a much tougher business for writers,” said Joshua Brand, a nominee in the Drama Series category for the episode “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” from last season of FX’s The Americans. “You’ll write on a show six months out of the year, then have to get another job in between… It used to be a season of a show could last a writer the whole year… There was a time when it was raining money in this business. That’s no longer the case.”

Christine Nangle, a writer on Inside Amy Schumer who is nominated with her team in the Variety Series category, said the money side of things has gotten a little weird at the intersection of sketch comedy and marketing. In the digital space, a network like Comedy Central can run an entire sketch from a show online, get millions of views and even advertising revenue, and yet “we’re not getting paid for that because it’s promotional,” Nangle said. The Writers Guild, she continued, has “taken an interest” in this issue, which means there could be changes ahead regarding payment and digital distribution of sketch comedy.

But business matters aside, most of the writers on the panel seemed to think the new face of the industry is at least good for creativity. “TV used to be called ‘the idiot box,’” said Jane Anderson, nominated in the Limited Series category for HBO’s Olive Kitteridge. “What’s happening now is TV has become what features were in the ‘70s…We are overtaking films in terms of inventiveness.”

What’s more, the “the fragmentation of the audience” that is allowing for AMC’s billion-dollar gold strikes also happens to be “good for the weirdness of a show,” said Weiner. Certainly Mad Men has had its share of sublime weirdness, and it’s hard to imagine a show like it ever going that far in another, less forgiving TV climate. There will always be tension between writers and the business people who both employ them and depend on them to create the content that keeps them employed as well. But there than be no doubt that at least artistically, that tension has slackened, at least a little bit, and hopefully the money side of things will work itself out – if it was ever really worked out to begin with.

“It’s not our job to worry about it,” said Anderson.

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