The Writers Strike, or how people decided to kill network TV

Talk is they are ready to strike until June at the earliest, meaning no new network TV until 2009. A year is a long time to recover.

Maybe it will be a revolution.

Maybe it will be terrible.

"I respect the WGA's position. They probably do deserve a larger percentage of profit participation, but a lengthy strike will affect more than just the writers and studios. On my show we had 14 writers. There were also 2 cameramen, 2 camera assistants, 4 hair stylists, 4 makeup artists, 7 wardrobe people, 4 grips, 4 electricians, 2 craft service, 4 props people, 6 construction, 1 medic, 3 art department, 5 set dressers, 3 sound men, 3 stand-ins, 2 set PAs, 4 assistant directors, 1 DGA trainee, 1 unit manager, 6 production office personnel, 3 casting people, 4 writers assistants, 1 script supervisor, 2 editors, 2 editors assistants, 3 post production personnel, 1 facilities manager, 8 drivers, 2 location managers, 3 accountants, 4 caterers and a producer who's not a writer. All 102 of us are now out of work.

"I have been in the motion picture business for 33 years and have survived three major strikes. None of which have been by any of the below the line unions. During the 1988 WGA strike many of my friends lost their homes, cars and even spouses. Many actors are publicly backing the writers, some have even said that they would find a way to help pay bills for the striking writers. When the networks run out of new shows and they air repeats the writers will be paid residuals.

Maybe it's just a disruption.

And yet, there’s something so ham-fisted and ridiculous about the studio’s position – honestly, we’re talking about a few cents here and there – and something so old-mannish about their terrified position on possible internet revenue streams – that it’s hard not to grab a sign and march around, acting out some kind of weird fantasy of myself – a guy with, let’s face it, no real marketable skills, who has nonetheless parlayed an ability to write funny words for other, better looking, people to say, into a very nice sinecure and a comfortable imported car – and act like I’m the lead in a Clifford Odets play.


The truth is, the web – that thing that brings us email and MySpace and cats playing the piano on YouTube – has a kind of Wal*Mart effect on the entertainment choices offered to the audience: there’s a lot more to choose from, most of it’s pretty awful, and all of it is going to be a lot cheaper. When you combine the digitization of content with unlimited bandwidth, what you get is a cheaper, more efficient system. And Brentwood was not built on cheap, or efficient. This town – and all of us who work here – all of us, writers, agents, actors, lawyers, studio executives, all of us here in the second grade classroom called Hollywood – have a stake in preserving this great big slushy inefficient mess of a system, that makes pilots that never get aired, buys scripts that never get produced, makes movies that no one sees, produces series that get cancelled.

man, no new tv shows til june. well, so long as internet porn does not go on strike i guess i will be ok

man, no new tv shows til june. well, so long as internet porn does not go on strike i guess i will be ok

I'm sure your wife loves you very much, Sauru.

man, no new tv shows til june. well, so long as internet porn does not go on strike i guess i will be ok

I'm sure your wife loves you very much, Sauru.

haha... but seriously i think i am gonna edit these posts now

For anyone that's interested, here's a detailed list of the shows going on air on TV this fall and how the strike affects them.

I can't believe Heroes is ending in December (and that they canceled the spinoff) because of a stupid strike.

No., not the tv shows.

I can't believe it. The second I'm getting more and more into tv shows something like this happens. What's next no movies? I can't see why they can't work things out.

On the other hand I do agree with the writers to some extent. Since they can be out of work pretty fast.

I just hope they solve this matter quick.. I need my tv show dosage on a daily basis.

And thanks for the list Joe. Its helpful to know whats gonna happen. Still can't believe they put 24 on hiatus.

No TV is good.
Maybe people will do something more productive like read a book or watch porn on the internet.
god bless porn.

ya see, me and grin know where its at.

There's only a handful of shows that are still producing new episodes that I watch on a regular basis but one of those is Scrubs and it looks as though the WGA strike is likely going to force the series to end on a whimper, with any true finale coming on a DVD release. Of the shows I watch, The Simpsons is in the best shape right now since all but one of the 23 episodes from Season 19 have apparently been produced. 2009 is a long wait indeed.

unfortuantely the Heroes season has been cut in half (they had like 23-24 eps last year right?). also journeyman is cut short too. those are the only shows i really care about.

Actually Q, NBC ordered just 13 (of which 11 have been produced) episodes of Journeyman. That's what happens with every new show: The network orders 8 to 13 episodes and then if the ratings are good enough, they consider ordering 10 to 12 more episodes.

Unfortunately, even if NBC ordered more episodes of Journeyman, which is unlikely since the show's viewers dropped from 9 to 5.75-million, the writers just won't write new scripts because of the strike.

Of the shows I watch, The Simpsons is in the best shape right now since all but one of the 23 episodes from Season 19 have apparently been produced. 2009 is a long wait indeed.

Most of the animated series should be fine, as they write the episodes long beforehand so they can be animated and recorded. South Park doesn't do this as is well known, and Family Guy has stopped in order to be more "current" as South Park has beat them to a lot of things.

Of course, as noted before, South Park will be fine, as they don't hire WGA.

Saw Leno, Conan, and Letterman return to their talk shows.

Leno's show stunk. Can't help it since he's solo writing his stuff. That Q&A with the audience was just horrible. jibjab, wtf.

Conan was ok. Like the new look but that part of him showing around his workplace quickly turns into a dragfest. That guest comedian is decent though.

Letterman blows the two away. It helps that he has his writers, and he has Robin Williams as his guest.

Well, it's not exactly a fair battle if one show has a full compliment of writers (kind of odd that Worldwide Pants negotiated that deal with the WGA, if they're in support of the strike) and the other two do not. On the whole, I still prefer Conan.

The writers of Worldwide Pants are given their acceptable share of the money, which is the reason WGA are in strike? Dave's company pays for the writers while Leno and Conan have no such company and are under the mercy of the network, which the WGA are picketing/under negotiations with.