WSJ Confirms Bleak Winter for WGA and Television Fans

In this article.

Late last week, I wrote to one of my "insider sources" and said, "This strike is going to last forever, right?"  Insider wrote back and said, "Yes, and the business is going to be unrecognizeable when it's over."

Insider also said, "Everyone on the line is talking about second careers."  The AMPTP should pay attention to that.  My "off the line" e-mail experience has been the same:  NO ONE ... and I repeat... NO ONE is talking about taking a bad deal so they can go back to work.  Everyone is aware that we have had a decent life because of the people who were willing to make sacrifices long before us, and we know that this strike isn't about a raise or slightly better health insurance.  It's about whether or not the writers who are in high school or college now will be treated with the respect that writers deserve, or treated like "schmucks with underwoods" (or, in this case, "smucks with laptops," as they were in the early days of the WGA.) 

I can tell you from three decades of sitting in rooms with them that no matter what you (or I) might think about their politics or the quality of what they put on the screen (over which, more often than not, they have very limited control) writers are nothing if not idealistic.  Especially about writing and about the concept of a writer.  People who are comparing this strike to 1988, in terms of the eventuality of our folding, are dead wrong.  The '88 strike is, in large part, why this one won't end that way.  This strike will end when the AMPTP puts a fair deal on the table, and not a moment before.  And if we have all sold our houses and gone to live in apartments and found whatever job would have us by then, so be it.

As my mother likes to say, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Comments

[joe]

The people who REALLY know -- insofar as such things are knowable -- what's going on are the Wall Street types. A pal at [Major Investment Bank] says they're calling it the Vietcong scenario: "We will win because you will get tired of fighting before we do." This is the AMPTP roadmap; the WGA will cave and take a bad deal because they presumably have a lower threshhold of pain. The AMPTP has made sure they accumulated a colossal amount of "strategic contingency reserves" (I love Wall Street-ese) to see them through any labor stoppages. Not just to weather a strike by the WGA, but also any such action by the SAG and the other Hollywood unions.

They also hoped to pad their advantage because WGAers are at the bottom of the Hollywood payment ladder and the very least likely, by virtue of circumstances and temperament, to have set aside the necessary financial resources to ride out a long strike.

What I don't think they were counting on was the WGA's neo-Spartan attitude of "with your shield or on it" that dictates the WGA would rather go over a cliff in flaing splinters than take a 1988-like or DVD-like deal.

I'll speak to St. Joseph on your behalf. He is the Patron of Workers (love the neo-socialist terminology!) and he has hammers and saws.

-J.

[Lickona]

I'm so sorry to hear this. And ditto on St. Joseph.

[Gina]

The writers have guts. I hope and pray that you guys will win this one!

[Melody]

I know that the AMPTP is thinking that they can make sure this lasts until the WGA folds because they can come up with jillions of so-called reality type shows and not worry about shows to put on TV. I call them "so-called reality" because there truly isn't anything real about them, just mostly unscripted.

The sad truth of the matter is that those shows have been beating a lot of the scripted shows in ratings. NBC took a leap and scheduled three one hour shows on Monday nights (two new, one a second year show) - to varying degrees I like all of them. But they have all been trounced in the ratings by "Dancing With the Stars(?)" (question mark for some of the stars? selected for the show) and "Bachelor." To me that is disgraceful. There is always an outcry for "quality shows" on TV, but for the past several years people just don't seem to watch those shows enough to keep them on the air.

I for one have never been a fan of the un-reality shows. I have always been a fan of shows with great ideas and clever writing - and that is due to those of you who are so good at what you do. But what can I do to help the cause? I do not have a Nielsen box, so my avoidance of un-reality shows will continue to not even make a blip on ratings. And even if I watched something to find out the advertisers and contacted the them, I am a member of the "undesirable" 45+ age group. Obviously my age group never spends any money...

Even though I will hate it when the TV schedules drift off to the latest dreadful unscripted shows, I understand the reasons for the strike and support the WGA in their efforts. I just wish there were something I could do to help.

[Phillip]

I like the VC analogy, though I think they're mistaken about its application to the AMPTP. After all, everyone knows who, by tallying the resources, SHOULD have won the war in Vietnam.

While the corporations' threshold of pain is of course inhumanly high, I suspect that of the collective executives/producers to be quite a bit lower than the writers'. After all, I just read that NBC has had to give back some ad money due to low ratings.

[JRM]

I can honestly say I feel for the writers. Why go into TV or film if not for the money, since it is the domain of the producer and the actor? My one reservation on the strike is that on the whole I don't miss the shows. You're average sitcom's dialogue and plot goes something like this: I like sex. Me, too. I want some sex. Sex, sex is good. Yeah, let's get some sex. Sex is great. I'm married so sex is boring. I'm not married, so I have great sex every night with a different person. Did anyone say sex? It's more than a little boring, though there are the exceptions. (They only mention three or four times an episode.)

[Gina]

Melody, don't feel bad -- I'm a member of the "desirable" age group, and as far as I can tell, nobody among the television powers-that-be feels one iota of obligation to me or anyone like me. My favorite characters get killed off, my favorite shows get canceled, and my favorite relationships bite the dust. For all the good being in the "desirable" demographic has ever done me, I might as well be in the "undesirable" one.

[/Bitter viewer rant]