The Writers Strike

December 19, 2007 | In Movies & TV | No Comments

It has been over a month now since the Writers Guild of America, the people that bring the majority of scripted television and film, kicked into gear. We’re starting to see the impact of the strike on TV as many shows are quietly turning over to repeats.

December is some what of a strange time to be realizing this as many television shows go into repeats around this time for a few weeks – the first major break of the year. There were a few Christmas and holiday themed shows, including “30 Rock,” “Monk,” “Psych” and specials like “Shrek The Halls.” There has been good content.

The new year will bring a few new shows, including a “Terminator” revisit that has me a little interested, but over all television will really noticeably slow down in the new year. A few episodes of “House” and “Bones” will find their way onto Fox and an episode of two are left for “Grey’s Anatomy.” The pain will come in with the flood of poorly conceived reality shows. I’m not looking forward to seeing that.

The late night talk shows also look to be returning, making deals with the WGA to make that happen. This is giving non-writer employees the opportunity to get back to work. I’ve given my support to the writers throughout this whole deal, I encourage everyone to read up on it and make their own decision.

My support comes with a disclaimer however. While I support the unions efforts in ensuring writers – and ultimately everyone involved is paid in the new technology spectrum, I encourage both sides to end this – compromise so everyone is happy. There are a lot of people out there who lost jobs because of the strike. It’s a difficult time to be dealing with that.

This new technology realm, which includes services like Hulu, that I wrote briefly about, where writers are receiving no compensation. The ad supported service is a new revenue stream for the studios and production companies. What they don’t tell you is, this takes away from possible streams in older sectors of the market. Re-runs, DVD sales and syndication take hits in viewership when people can log onto a Web site to watch the same content. The production companies and studios are side stepping residuals writers (actors and other employees) receive.

The music industry has something similar in the ring tone world. Unless a contract otherwise states, the sale of ring tones based on songs are revenue streams for record companies while the artists never see those residuals.

I hope to see an end to this soon. As a writer in a different realm, I can understand where they are coming from. But at the same time, I hope people keep their fellow members of the industry in mind. Bring back the Office and Heroes, please.