Monday, November 5, 2007

TV & Film Strike

As of midnight last night, TV and film writers went on strike, which could lead to more reality tv. ABC News writer Sheila Marikar said:
"The contract the Writers Guild of America had with the major TV networks and
movie studios expired Nov. 1. For months, the union has been negotiating with
the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over a new contract. But
both sides are at odds over how much of a cut writers should get for online
distribution of TV shows and movies, and talks fell apart Wednesday afternoon."
In the immediate future, not much will change, besides the disappearance of late-night series such as The Daily Show. TV networks have a number of episodes already written, so scripted shows will continue to air as usual. The Los Angeles Times has a chart that depicts how many episodes of major series are written. Without scripted series, networks need something other than reruns to fill time. Therefore, we could see an increase in unscripted reality shows as early as next year, if The Writers Guild of America is still on strike. This isn't very good news though. A bunch of people who produce great entertainment are out of work for an indeterminate amount of time, which hurts everyone. In addition, the immediate demand for reality shows could lead to more crap and producers will just start shooting out nonsense. The biggest change for reality television right now is that CBS might move Big Brother 9's premiere to March.

2 comments:

Matt said...

I didn't really expect the strike to actually happen when talk of it first surfaced, but now that its happened, it seems really serious. That grid really shows just how much the networks will be affected, so its interesting that they're not moving towards what their writers are demanding.

ShariR said...

I agree especially by early next year..the networks are going to be very affected by this. Their not going to have any new episodes of anything to put on the air.