#179 Postby Brent » Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:38 pm
New article on the strike and by type of show what effects there will be if it happens, Lost fans DO NOT READ the part about Lost!
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19 — During the last Hollywood writers strike, in 1988, David Letterman gave a blunt assessment of the quality of his show.
“We have nothing to do, the writers aren’t here,” he intoned at the opening of one show. “So a guy’s gonna come in and shave me. Fifty-five minutes, ladies and gentlemen! Fifty-five minutes to go!”
Viewers may want to brace themselves for a lot of similarly jury-rigged entertainment if writers and producers do not come to an agreement on a new contract by the end of the month.
A strike by the Writers Guild of America, which could begin as soon as Nov. 1, would cut a ragged edge across the entertainment industry, with television and movies affected in different ways. Depending on the timing and length of a strike, some television shows would grind along just fine, while others would jerk to a halt. “The Simpsons” is safe, for instance, but light a candle for “Lost.” And reality shows, whose writers are nonunion, will become even more of a television staple than they are now.
Meanwhile, moviegoers would not feel any immediate impact, because studios work a year or more in advance and have been stockpiling scripts to shoot in case writers walk the picket line. But some big franchise films, like the “Transformers” sequel, are likely to be delayed. And fans could suffer later on, as films pushed earlier into production surface with poor results in 2009.
“Any time you rush movies, you disrupt the rhythm, and I can promise you the result isn’t as good,” said John Davis, a producer of “Norbit,” “I, Robot” and other movies.
If a work stoppage lasts for just a few days or even a few weeks, there would be relatively little impact on the overall entertainment pipeline, producers say. Networks have between four and five episodes for many prime-time shows ready to go, while studios are wrapping and rushing into production already written movies that are not scheduled to arrive in theaters until the end of 2008 and into 2009.
But one sliver of the business in particular faces immediate disruption. Late-night shows from “Late Show With David Letterman” on CBS to “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central are produced daily, with writers massaging the news of the day into comedic segments and monologues.
For a time, fans should expect to see repeat episodes, as if the hosts had departed on some kind of joint vacation, networks say. In the longer term, hosts like Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” could just wing it, as Mr. Letterman and Johnny Carson did after several months of reruns in 1988. (At one point during that five-month industrywide strike, Mr. Carson filled time by looking at snapshots brought in by Ed McMahon.)
Networks say some late-night hosts could return to work without violating guild strike rules: while contracts vary, a performer writing for himself is covered by a separate agreement with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. A spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America East said hosts could not write any more material than they personally handled pre-strike.
Daytime shows would suffer next. Soap operas like “The Young and the Restless,” viewed by some six million people a day, typically have a monthlong backlog of episodes. Because of their serial nature, soap operas do not perform well in repeats. Networks say they would try to maintain ratings during the day in the event of a strike by substituting more news and sports programming.
The rest of daytime is a jumble. News writers are represented by a different union, so “Today” on NBC and the cable news channels will be unaffected — except for the bags that will form under the eyes of anchors as they are pressed to fill more airtime. But talk shows are all over the map: “The View,” which uses union writers, would be thrown into more chaos than normal, while “The Martha Stewart Show” would continue cooking right along.
Of course, most viewers care about prime time. Although each network is different — with only two hours to program each night, and “American Idol,” which would be unaffected, on the way, Fox is sitting pretty — network executives say a couple of general rules apply.
Long-running shows like NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” are likely to stay in original episodes longer because they are further ahead in production than new programs like ABC’s “Pushing Daisies.” And the so-called sweeps periods in November and February, when advertising rates are set for local stations, still matter. So networks will keep what originals they have for those months and leave December and January more barren than usual.
Genre matters, too. Animated series like “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy,” completed up to a year in advance, are strike-proof for this season at least. Much more problematic are complicated serial dramas like “Lost,” which networks typically broadcast without repeats. With the next season of “Lost” (which begins in February) only half finished, ABC has a big decision to make: Should it show the episodes that are done? Or delay the program’s return until all episodes can be completed?
Of course, reality shows are not affected at all. Networks have been stockpiling reality material in the event of a strike. The CW network alone has five completed reality series ready to go: the returning shows “America’s Next Top Model,” “Beauty and the Geek” and “Pussycat Dolls Present,” and the new entries “Farmer Wants a Wife” and “Crowned,” about beauty pageants.
Warren Littlefield, an independent producer and the former president of NBC, who was that network’s executive vice president of programming during the last writers strike, said the news divisions would be pushed to deliver spicy specials to plug holes. He noted that the CBS newsmagazine “48 Hours” rose to prominence in 1988. Sports, concerts and shows produced in Britain and Australia are also likely to pop up in prime time, depending on the length of a strike. NBC is already looking at the possibility of broadcasting the British version of “The Office.”
The lack of a clear road map for consumers is a worry for entertainment executives. After all, movie and television fans, their allegiance already weakening as video games and the Internet eat up more leisure time, don’t need additional prodding to find something else to do.
“There is tremendous fear in the industry about breaking a habit,” Mr. Littlefield said. “During the last strike, the audience wandered and a lot of people didn’t quite come back.”
On the bright side, the 1988 strike played a big role in introducing at least one guilty pleasure to a national audience. Desperate for programming, Fox plucked “Cops” from a local station and placed it on Saturday night, where it continues to run.
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It was a really good show so I'm happy.
