All of the scripted television shows are going to a little vacation spot called hiatus. No one should worry because there will still be plenty of reality shows and news programming to tide the audience over until the end of the writer’s strike.
To be clear, it is not just television that will have to survive without writers for a while, but also movie studios and anywhere else that employs pens from the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Of course, with the time lag between when a film is written and when it finally comes to the screen being much greater than the time between when most television shows are written and when they air, it is through television that most consumers of WGA output will notice the ramifications of the strike that began on November 5th.
So what has silenced the keyboards of the WGA? Briefly, studios, directors, actors, and writers all came to an agreement in the Eighties that left the majority of money from video (and subsequently from DVD) sales in the pocket of the studios. With the decline of reruns, where many get residuals, and the upswing of various home entertainment choices over the intervening decades, the other three parties have been kicking themselves ever since. With the impending WGA contracts up for renewal, and actor’s and director’s unions following next year, the thought that anyone will not get their fair share of money made through the Internet has everyone ready to wage war. With the studios not budging a bit in early negotiations, the WGA decided to show how serious they are by calling for a strike. Given the distance between the positions of the two sides, it is likely to last for a considerable time. The idea that if the studios give too much, or show weakness against the WGA, the actors and directors will demand large slices of the Internet pie; this has the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Studios deeply entrenched.
For those who do not care where the money goes and simply have an interest in what they watch, many might be glad to know that the studios have been store housing a fair number of episodes for most popular sitcoms and dramas and those might manage to take some shows into early 2008. No one should count on seeing any of their favorites finishing out the season though, if the WGA strike goes beyond ten episodes, as nothing has been written that far in advance. If like many college students tastes run toward late night television talk shows or comedy like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, those options mostly walked to the picket lines on day one of the strike.