Writer's Guild Strike

On November 5 of this week, the Writer's Guild of America officially went on strike. This union represents at least 12,000 television and motion picture scriptwriters on the West, as well as East coast. The strike will interrupt the contractual agreements with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, affecting the amount of new scripts that will be available for immediate use.

According to readily available WGA statistics, approximately forty-eight percent of the West Coast writers are unemployed right now. Although this is unfortunate, the salaries for working Writer's Guild Members range from five million a year to fifty thousand a year. Of course, one of the major demands that couldn't be met was over money.

The WGA and the Alliance could not come to any agreement over payment increases for DVD releases of movies and television shows that they were a part of along with the newest trend of online showings of such works. The WGA proposed a 2.5% profit from the online venue. The Producers have argued that the money that is raised from these ventures will be used to offset the rising costs on their end of operations. Thus, this strike has resulted.

What should the average television/movie watcher expect from this strike? It would seem that the first type of television shows to start re-runs would be the talk shows. These types of shows depend largely on fresh material from daily life and there will be no writers available to write the new material.

Television sit-coms, which are filmed before a live audience, should be the next affected. Many of these including: "Back to You", "The Adventures of Old Christine" and "Desperate Housewives" will not have scripts to add new content. These shows may not continue any new episodes after this week.

The daytime soap operas will also feel the crunch. Usually these types of shows tape about 5 days ahead, so be prepared for reruns of these, too. May not be bad for those who have missed a few of these dramas.

According to the Examiner, "The strike will not immediately impact production of movies or prime-time TV programs. Most studios have stockpiled dozens of movie scripts, and TV shows have enough scripts or completed shows in hand to last until early next year." That means that they will still have some fresh shows in the programming.

With the last Writer's Guild of America strike in 1988, it was twenty-two weeks before it was settled. That seems like a long time and this one might last longer. With the issues at a standstill on agreement it might be quite awhile before anyone sees new episodes of their favorite shows.