I don’t want to be Mr. Depression, but just to warn you, there’s a possible – emphasis for the moment on “possible” – major writers strike that could hit Hollywood within weeks.
The Writers Guild of America’s contract expires Oct. 31 – and the TV and movies we watch are going to take a big hit. All of Hollywood could change permanently in ways no one expects.
Here’s the far-too-simple lay of things right now: The writers work under a series of agreements that extend back decades, and some of them had no way to anticipate changes in the media world.
Writers say many of their members earn one-quarter to one-half of their incomes from residuals – payments for reuse or repeats of things they wrote – but they only get a tiny bit of money from DVD sales, because when they last signed a contract, who knew DVD sales would explode? So writers want a bigger cut of DVD profits. But even more importantly to them and to everyone, they want a good slice of the profit pie that comes in areas like on-demand and, most of all, online.
The thing is, no one knows what’s going to happen online, or how business online will shake out. And the profits so far have generally been pretty small, at least in the relative terms of show business.
Studio people say they don’t make the money they used to from repeats; shows cost more but generate less advertising revenue; and the online world is re-arranging itself so quickly, no one can predict any kind of permanent economy.
The studios and the networks, who are owned by the same people, are proposing some minor changes and a shakeout period of a couple years to let things settle. The writers fear that if they agree to a smaller cut now, they’ll never get it any larger. The studios fear if they agree to a bigger cut now, they’ll never get it any smaller.
It could just be talk. Or it could be pushing everyone toward a strike. If that happens on Nov. 1, here’s what it could mean: The networks would run out of new episodes of scripted shows around mid-January. They would fill in with more reality shows because reality isn’t part of the writers guild contract. The nets might also go with more primetime sports, newsmagazines and repeats.
Late-night TV, which is covered by the guild and is done live, would be affected immediately. There is talk that the guild might eventually give late- night writers a waiver of sorts, but no one is sounding charitable at the moment.
Movie production would also grind to a stop, though no one has an estimate on when that might happen. And then there are all the side consequences. A fall strike would hurt the networks and studios in a couple of ways beyond just smacking the current season upside the head. We’re at the time when writers start writing scripts that might become shows for next season. So, suddenly, fall TV 2008 could go dry.
And if the strike lasts for more than a couple of weeks, the networks might decide to cancel some of their currently marginal new shows.
The last writers strike was in 1988, and it gave birth to primetime newsmagazines, which the networks used as filler and decided to keep active after the strike.
No one knows what might catch on at this time, or whether viewers will give up on popular serialized shows like, say, “Heroes,” after missing them for weeks or months.
