Writers Strike Lingers; No Pilot Season?

It is no surprise that the bats have been surged inside the collective belfry that is the movie and television industry in Los Angeles; people have been out of work for two months, late night talk show hosts are pairing up with non-union writers and some are even sticking their own neck out, as David Letterman who has offered to pay the difference once this strike is settled, just to get back on the air with their own writers.

The networks have tried this funny business where they've kept some of the shows they taped in September and October just to show them now, in January, as "all new episodes" to hold on to their fleeing audience base as they all scuttle away to cable syndicated programming and subscription movie services. Someone besides Justine Bateman obviously had an idea that this strike could on for much longer than anyone might have liked.

But today, we're at a crossroads. Because as the seer Bateman inferred in my exclusive interview you can read here on Associated Content, there has been no movement on either side. Many of the local news pundits on talk radio here in LA, at the time, began to project what this strike could look like in the spring. While those not really a part of the discussion at the time might have thought otherwise, we are nearing spring in a television sitcom sense of the word. Now the discussion has shifted out of the spring and has moved to the Pilot season for fall 2008.

In a Back Stage Magazine post today from their myspace profile, they posit the likelihood that there might not even been a pilot season. While not literally, as the studios have done their best running incessant out takes from popular reality programs, sports, news, new reality programs (which are probably, already recorded, pulled reality programs; one show called "Jail" appears especially ridiculous) and they've even thought to bring back Saturday morning favorites from the 1980's like American Gladiators, the fear is real and apparent that we may not get to see any new programs or new episodes of favorites in the Fall!

Never before have sitcoms seemed so important to our lives; this is a turning point for things like cable televison and webisodes. Never to be shorted, Back Stage, the industry weekly for actors, asks its readers what is going on? "Back Stage is working on an article about how the writers' strike will affect the coming pilot season. Will there be fewer auditions for scripted shows? More auditions for reality shows?"

While many of the actors and others from Los Angeles have been able to secure seats at tapings of "Deal or No Deal" and "The Price Is Right," there is a growing concern that this desert town could very soon dry up completely without the film and television industry around which it was built.