Hello and welcome my name is John August and you're listening to episode 653 of

script notes a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to

screenwriters today on the show we discuss a giant area of television writing we've barely covered

over the 12 years of our program which is multi-camera sitcoms. From Seinfeld to

friends to most of the Disney Channel programs these were the shows we grew up watching and

they still account for a sizable portion of the writing happening today.

We'll also look at the WJ's annual report, which gasped shows that writer income was

down for the year for reasons we can't possibly imagine,

so we'll try to get to the bottom of that.

To help us do all this, let's welcome a writer, producer, director whose credits range from

my so-called life, to boys to the Carmichael Show to

Superstore she's also the Secretary-Treasurer of the Writers Guild of America

West. Welcome to the incredible Betsy Thomas. Oh John we should follow me around and just do that all the time.

I'm your height man. That was fantastic. So the first time we met, I think was the first time

we met was you had reached out to me, emailed me or called

me to say like, hey can we talk about me running for the board and so we had a drink and we talked

through stuff and I'm so happy you decided to run for the board.

You know I am most of the time but yes that was really fun and

and we had a drink and then I found that I was like oh and then later I was like oh you kind of

made an exception for me it's not like you I was like, oh, you kind of made an exception for me.

It's not like you, I was like, oh, I feel flattered.

Yeah, it was like a Friday afternoon someone said, let's have a martini, but I'm not

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