The Writers Strike and You

The Writer's Guild of America is now on strike against television and film producers. While the issues at stake are not insignificant, our readers are probably most concerned with how this strike will affect their personal television watching experience. How long will it be until there's nothing left but repeats, infomercials, and the return of Dateline NBC 7 nights a week?

The shows that will be affected immediately are those that are taped the day they air: The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. All will be in repeats beginning tonight. Some may remember that during the previous writers' strike in 1988, David Letterman did eventually return to the air, cobbling together a monologue that amounted to what he could write himself. But those shows weren't very good, and this would likely be a last resort in the event of a very long strike (and assuming the host of a program isn't covered by WGA rules, as some of them are). The morning shows will be unaffected, but the soaps will probably run out of new episodes by the end of November unless they go to nonunion labor as in 1988.

It will take more time for the impact of the strike on most primetime programming to manifest itself. Work can continue on completed scripts, and most shows have between 4 and 6 such scripts left to shoot. A show like CSI, where the producers and writers have had the luxury of working ahead of time with the knowledge they won't be cancelled, will probably have at least half of its season already written, and perhaps more. All shows have original episodes running during November sweeps, but December is typically a rerun-heavy month of low viewership anyway, so the primetime viewer won't notice much amiss through the holidays. If the strike is still going on by the start of the new year (and there are pessimists who think it will be, since it will take that long for the producers and networks to feel any big sting), some shows, particularly non-serialized programs and sitcoms that hold up better in repeats, will likely hold their last few original episodes for the February sweeps period.

Some types of shows will be unaffected. The production schedule for animated programs is about a year long, meaning that the shows making up the Fox Sunday night animation block will go on as scheduled--at least for the 2007-08 season. The 1988 strike was a spur to the newsmagazine format, and while these shows are now almost extinct, a long strike will likely bring them back. And of course, there is the genre that didn't exist in 1988: reality. These shows don't use WGA writers and will be completely unaffected. The biggest beneficiary, at least in relative terms, could be Fox, which has had a penchant for ordering up additional hours of American Idol even without a strike to motivate them. Reality shows are also notorious for their quick production schedules, so with the strike now itself a reality, the networks are no doubt taking pitches right now for new "unscripted" programming that could be on the air within weeks.

Neither of the two major serialized shows scheduled to return in the winter, Lost and 24, have anything close to a full complement of episodes. They could begin their seasons as originally scheduled, but unless the strike is settled soon, both shows would face an interruption not long afterwards. Neither program works nearly as well when it is broken up by reruns or long breaks, so their networks may have a hard decision to make.

What about new series? These could be the biggest victims of the strike. Most new series receive new episode orders as the season progresses, only after they have proven themselves worthy of keeping their spots on the schedule. So new shows will likely have fewer scripts left to shoot and will run out of new episodes sooner. With almost no repeats to air and without having been around long enough for anyone to miss them when they're gone, new shows may fall by the wayside completely. Private Practice, with decent ratings and an influential producer, will probably be OK. But NBC's new hourlong dramas Chuck, Bionic Woman, Life, and Journeyman, all of which are struggling, might find themselves killed off by a long strike.

Even after the strike ends, the implications are likely to be noticed for years to come. Everyone concedes a strike will be very costly, and the networks, already paranoid about changing entertainment patterns and trimming budgets furiously, will no doubt feel the need to cut back on ambitious plans. The first sign of this came last week with the announcement that NBC was holding off on the planned spinoff Heroes: Origins. If television becomes less interesting to watch, both in the short and the long run, people will watch less of it. In 1988, online culture was a few geeks on Usenet. Today, it represents a genuine alternative to TV viewing that millions will avail themselves of if the strike lingers--something that both sides of this dispute will hopefully keep in mind.

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