It’s The End of TV As We Know It, and It’s Not Fine

Imagine a television schedule filled with only reality shows and reruns. Sounds like summer? Well, it might just be winter too this year.

On Nov. 5, writers of your favorite television shows and movies shut down their laptops, picked up signs, and formed picket lines in Los Angeles and New York. The Writers Guild of America had voted to strike against the companies that make their shows and movies. The strike started after negotiations broke off between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents 35 to 40 major production companies and corporations (not individual producers of shows).

Rather predictably, the strike is about money. As viewers are turning toward new media to watch television, either online or on DVD, the industry itself is changing. The writers are looking for what they consider to be a fair share of this new media—including a percentage of profits from online distribution and a small increase in their cut of DVD sales. Currently, whenever a show is watched online or downloaded, the writers get nothing because the studio heads claim that these are purely promotional—even though money is made from advertising.

Although the writers are on strike, fans of shows like Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy haven’t begun to feel the effects yet. All prime-time shows are a few episodes ahead in terms of production and a few more in terms of writing. In most cases, there will be enough episodes to last through December, when they would go on a short hiatus anyway, but some shows are not so lucky. Sorry, Office fans, last night’s episode was the last new one you’ll see for a while—maybe even until next season. The show actually has a few more finished scripts, but as a member of the WGA, Steve Carell won’t cross the picket line—which means the Dunder Mifflin antics are going to be on hold until the strike’s over.

But late-night shows—including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report—have been in trouble for two weeks now. These shows don’t have a stockpile of episodes, which explains why you’ve been watching repeats. There is some hope, though. In 1988, Johnny Carson eventually crossed a picket line to do his show without the writers, so Leno, Letterman, and Conan may eventually return to work this time around.

In 1988, the writers went on a twenty-two-week strike leaving the networks without new scripted programming for over five months. According to reports, the industry lost more than $500 million—and that was in 1988. The effect that this strike could, and most likely will, have on the entertainment industry is tremendous.

So what have the writers been up to since Nov. 5? They’ve been picketing in front of production studios, corporate offices, and even the World of Disney store here in New York. In front of the Disney store on Wednesday, writers seemed to be in good spirits considering the circumstances. There was a sense of camaraderie as they chanted, sang, played a drum, got cars to honk, and chatted with each other.

Mark Bomback, writer of last summer’s hit Live Free or Die Hard, explained, “Writers tend to pick their career because they don’t have to leave the house. So for me, the thing that’s been most striking, no pun intended, is that there are lots of really famous and important writers who are out here, and lots of writers who are just starting out, and they’re all stuck on the same little line. I never really thought about what it would mean to actually go out on strike in terms of the upsides of it, and one of the upsides is you get to meet a lot of other people who do what you do.” Ron Carlivati, head writer of One Life to Live, echoed the sentiment. “If you could say there’s a good thing [about the strike], it’s seeing your fellow writers. Because it’s so hard and so depressing, to see somebody else’s face that’s in the same boat as you lifts your spirits.”

The atmosphere in front of World of Disney during the second week of the strike was much crazier than the first week of striking. William Mapother, who played crazy Ethan on Lost, said: “It’s a bit rowdier for a couple of reasons. One, we’re in front of the Disney store, which provides a better backdrop than just a tall anonymous building. Number two, we’re getting a lot more response from the cars and taxis going by honking and yells of support. And number three, I think the last several days there has been, at least on the Web and especially out in L.A., a great surge of support. There are a number of terrific videos on YouTube and I think the writers here are responding to that and there’s a swelling of community that there might not have been the first week.”

Writers aren’t the only ones on the picket lines. In L.A., the WGA held “Picketing with the Stars” on Tuesday, where stars from a wide variety of shows—including Army Wives, The Big Bang Theory, CSI, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Numb3rs, and more—came out to support the writers. On the East Coast, WGA members Tina Fey and Seth Meyers have been out striking as well.

While the writers aren’t alone in their fight against the producers, they’re also not the only ones who will be affected. The crews of these television shows—known in the industry as “below the line” workers— face tough times ahead. Discussing his crew, Vahan Moosekian, executive producer of The Unit said: “The crews that I work with every day, nothing comes of it [the strike] for them, but yet they’re the ones who are the most vulnerable, because they’re salary hourly employees and they’re going to get hurt the worst by this work stoppage. So when you talk about grips and electricians and prop makers and painters and carpenters and set designers, you’re talking about people who can only survive a couple of months without a job.”

Whatever the financial outcome of the strike, there are a few ways this can play out for the rest of this season and even next season. According to Moosekian: “If the strike doesn’t last terribly long, we might just simply lose an episode or two and we’ll just pick it up. If it goes on for a long time, the network might decide to just scrap the rest of the season. It all depends on how many weeks go by because there’re only so many airdates available. And after May they don’t air any more original episodes. However long it takes to get back into production will be determined by how long the strike lasts. Each week that goes by, or each week-and-a-half that goes by, we lose an episode of our original twenty-two.”

As for next season: “There’s a lot that can come out of the strike. Everything from resentment—like if the strike ends and people are very resentful—or the strike lasts so long that the studios feel they have to cut back on their financial involvement and so what they do is they want to produce the show for less money. The opposite could be true—they could say, well America is so starved for product, we have to spend more money and so the effect could be the opposite. If a certain date is not met, for example, they might decide that the American audience is just dying for original programming so instead of doing 22 episodes, they might do 28 episodes or 25 episodes or something like that. I’m sure it’s going to affect it somehow, but not necessarily adversely. It might affect it positively. But if it lasts nine or 10 months, I suspect there won’t even be a season next year. I hope it certainly doesn’t come to that, where it goes on so long that we don’t even do next season.”

Columbia activism can be applied to the writers’ strike as well. Rob Kutner, a writer for The Daily Show, has some advice. “If people at Columbia want to see The Daily Show and other shows they like come back, go to unitedhollywood.com and fans4writers.com. There are action campaigns that are mobilizing in the next day or so. The two things you can do are making phone calls to the studio heads, and there’s also going to be a campaign where we’re going to mail something in to them to get their attention. We have to make them feel how important it is to the public. So I’m urging everyone in the public who wants to bring good shows back and make sure that the hardworking people who create the shows that they like get a little bit of the pie, to take action by calling the studios or following the news on more physical action campaigns coming up.”