This is news. Whitta worked?
So how is this strike, if extended, really going to effect the average person? I know Letterman was making jokes about not being on the air if it happens, but is that actually the case or not? I remember a few years ago there was a strike that affected the Canadian CBC network and the impact there was very noticeable. The only news was BBC feeds, total reruns the rest of the time, etc.
I realize how it affects shows in production, but since this is only a writer’s strike there are already scripts that are finalized and just waiting to be shot. I read somewhere that most season shows are set for episodes for another two months.
Shows like SNL, Tonight Show, Daily Show, Colbert, etc will go off the air (or at least into re-runs) immediately. Taped shows like sitcoms etc have enough episodes in the can to last a couple of months.
Last time the writers want on strike, Letterman & Leno wrote their own material. It was pretty limited, lots and lots of interview time relative to comedy.
Are you afraid they will work around you by hiring one million monkeys and buying one million typewriters?
There’s a case to be made that the reality show trend has it’s nascent origins in the 1987 WGA strike, one of the consequences of which was the t.v. show COPS, which, obviously, didn’t need to be written.
So, you can blame them for the vapid, insipid, lowest-common-denominator, bypassing-actual-thought-and-imagination, cable television landscape we now find ourselves slogging through.
I don’t know how real the threat of scab labor is. I do know the WGA has tried to head it off by threatening to permanently ban any non-guild writer who works for a struck company from future WGA membership.
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing a lot lately. You never really run out of things to do.
Anyway, hang in there man! You’re British so “stiff upper lip!” :)
Does Greta Van Susteren use writers to tell her what to say about the latest missing white wife/girlfriend/college student/high school sweetheart?
I freaking hope so. :(
[EDIT]
Um, because, then they would be on strike and she couldn’t do those stories anymore.
I think the writers for Bionic Woman were ahead of the game on this strike. I was watching the pilot last night and I thought “Who wrote this crap?” “Nobody” sounds about right. The show’s writing duties must have been replaced by an unskilled intern’s labor in turning the crank on an automatic cliché generator.
But if it’s not going to pay off, why did 90% vote for the strike? And is it just the studios that are being jerks, or is it all of television stations + the movie industry too?
If SAG supports the strike, will they stop working in protest as well?
No, but they will picket.
There’s a last-ditch meeting on Sunday in an attempt to avert the strike. Can’t see it helping,though.
Unions are evil. Defy them. They do not deserve your obedience.
Unions are “evil” until you work for a company with company appointed “employee representatives”. They’re just like unions except they rubberstamp outsourcing your jobs to <insert unpopular country>, a -10% pay rise and making you all redundant.
Nobody except writers ever accused the writers of being particularly smart, collectively. The last time they did this, they ended up with 4% of DVD revenue.
And is it just the studios that are being jerks, or is it all of television stations + the movie industry too?
TV, too, and that’s the real crux, as TV employs far more writers (though far fewer than they did, say, before the last strike, hmmmm) than the movies do.
Well, my girlfriend is packing her bags to head out to LA. She swears that if Heroes misses one episode, people are gonna die.
I don’t mind. Maybe a bit of the old ultra-violence will cheer her up.
Never cross a picket line. If nothing else it’s a day off work.
If I worked for that company, I’d quit my job and find another one. If all the jobs were like that, I’d quit and find another line of work.
I’ve done it before for lesser sins.
I work for a “freedom” company and the only reason there are as many of us here as there are is that they can’t outsource us quick enough.
Fortunately when I was originally sacked for trying to get union representation in they didn’t keep any records. Now I work for me, working there, and I’m still trying to get a union into where I used to work.
At the point I become an employer unions will become evil. As an employee that £2 a month is worth it’s weight in gold. it might not seem it at the time, but get fucked over without a union and go to something like ACAS and see what happens.
I walked a picket line for two weeks in Toronto in February.
Enjoy the sun, Gary.
Troy
This isn’t P&R so i’ll just counter Rimbo without arguing the point.
Unions are a godsend and I’ll happily be paying my $200 dues even when I’m freelance starting next month.