While winter break has come and gone, the Writers Guild of America strike continued throughout the holiday season and is now going strong into its 10th week.
After going on strike Nov. 5, the WGA and the American motion picture and television producers are still at odds with no new negotiations planned for the new year. In light of this continued stance from the WGA, much of the Hollywood landscape has changed as networks and studios prepare for the long haul.
Who’s Laughing Now
Those returning to their regular schedules and television habits after the holidays were welcomed back with new episodes of late night shows such as “Late Night with David Letterman” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” which both returned Jan. 2. Late night hosts like Letterman, Leno, Craig Ferguson, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel were the some of the first WGA members to return back to work during the strike (fellow late night host Carson Daly was the first on Dec. 4).
The return to broadcast marked a small victory for these late night hosts, some of whom had gone so far as to pay their non-writing staffs out of their own pockets to keep them employed through December in case they were able to return to the air in 2008.
However while they all might have returned to their desks last Wednesday night, there was a notable difference for Letterman and Ferguson.
Worldwide Pants Productions, Letterman’s production company that handles both his show and Ferguson’s show (which also both air on CBS) reached an agreement with the WGA. The agreement not only allows these shows’ hosts to return, but allows their full writing staffs to return as well.
This has created a marked difference between the late night shows as Letterman and Ferguson are allowed to prepare material ahead of time while Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel are not even allowed to write their own material ahead of time as they are also guild members.
“With this deal there is less there than meets the eye,” said David R. Ginsburg, the executive director of the entertainment and media law and policy program at UCLA School of Law. “They agreed to things like new media and reality TV but they don’t produce reality TV, so for them to agree to that is a bunch of nothing.”
Leno, O’Brien and Kimmel were not able to reach agreements with the WGA similar to the Worldwide Pants Agreement because their shows are produced directly by the studios: NBC for Leno and O’Brien and Kimmel on ABC.
Ginsburg also said the agreement between Worldwide Pants and the guild is only temporary until the guild and AMPTP come to a permanent settlement.
“This is an interim agreement which many independent companies enter into. They say, “˜We will agree to whatever you want and when you finally settle on an industry-wide basis this will end.’ It’s kind of a stop gap,” he said.
Also because of the Worldwide Pants Agreement, the Screen Actors Guild has encouraged its members to appear on Letterman and Ferguson and steered them away from going on the other late night shows.
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” plan to return to new episodes tonight though it is unclear whether they will return with or without their writing staffs. Both shows had started negotiations with the guild last week.
Primetime Shake Up
Besides the late night talk shows, a majority of the other popular programming on network television, primetime dramas and comedies, have running out of new episodes.
The half hour comedy “The Office” was one of the first shows to run out of episodes shortly after the strike began but now even hour-long dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy” have run out of steam, which will air its last episode on Thursday. Both NBC and ABC announced new retooled schedules beginning this month, which will push longtime favorites such as “Grey’s” and “The Office” out of their prime schedule slots.
These adjustments are in favor of scripted shows still waiting to air (ABC’s “Lost” was pushed up a month to premiere Jan. 31 in “Grey’s” time spot) or to make way for a flood of reality programming (“The Celebrity Apprentice” started last week in “The Office’s” old 9 p.m. slot).
Select shows will still run in repeats on new nights, such as “Grey’s Anatomy” on Friday nights, which then be followed by rotated repeats of ABC’s newer shows such as freshmen shows “Private Practice” and “Dirty Sexy Money.”
However, even these scripted midseason replacements such as “Lost” only have eight episodes ready to air, which means in a few short months networks will have to dig for other alternatives.
Networks are not just turning to new reality projects, such as NBC’s revival of “American Gladiators,” for help.
One such alternative is cable television. Networks are turning to their sister cable networks to keep viewers hooked with fresh programming.
For example, CBS has announced it may start airing edited versions of the hit series “Dexter” that airs on parent company Viacom’s pay cable network Showtime.
NBC says it plans to air episodes of its company’s USA network’s “Monk” and “Psych” in March a few months after the new episodes have aired on USA this January.
Soaps Hire Scabs
Many primetime dramas may be in repeats or off the schedule completely but daytime dramas are still alive and ticketing, albeit with new creative forces.
Daytime soap operas such as “General Hospital” and “The Young and the Restless” usually broadcast new episodes Monday through Friday, barely ever airing repeats so as to keep story lines moving, so it came as no surprise to many that once new episodes from regular writing staff members ran out, scab writers and financial core WGA members took over right where the striking writers had left off.
Financial core means that a member has officially left the guild, although still receiving pension and residuals, to legally cross the picket line.
One prime example of someone affected by scabs and financial core members is Marina Alburger, a member of the writing staff for “The Young and the Restless.”
After the last episode written by her and the rest of the show’s staff aired on Dec. 24, new episodes continued immediately with writing credits going to Josh Griffith, one of the show’s co-executive producers who went financial core from the WGA in order to cross the picket line, as well as Maria Avena Bell, the daughter-in-law of the show’s creator.
“It is starting to become crunch time for me financially. I have begun searching for alternative means of work,” said Alburger.
“I love nothing more than to write so to have to go off and be a cocktail waitress or a bartender, it’s not for me. I didn’t go to UCLA and earn a bachelor’s degree in communication studies to become a cocktail waitress or work at Nordstrom’s. Those are fine things to be, and fine places to work, but they are not me. It’s not what I came to Los Angeles to do … I love writing. It’s just who I am,” she said.
While Alburger, like many on strike, feels frustrated by the ongoing situation, her resolve for a beneficial resolution still stands.
“I have to do what I have to do and I have to stand for my guild,” she said. “It’s tough to know that the show is going on without us but we do know there is going to be a day after the strike and we do plan to return to get the show back on track.”
And the award goes to…
It still looks as if the strike will affect the television industry much more than the motion picture side of the entertainment business. However, one place where the movie industry will be hit hard by the strike is the upcoming awards season.
The WGA plans to picket outside both the Golden Globes awards ceremony and the Academy Awards ceremony unless an agreement is reached beforehand. This means that guild members are not allowed to write jokes, introductions, or monologues for these telecasts, and they also will not be attending these events to either present or accept awards.
It was also announced Friday that the SGA, who has supported the strike since the beginning, will also not be attending the Golden Globes, scheduled on Jan. 13. This means that every actor and actress in Hollywood is not allowed to attend the event.
“(Actors and actresses) are mainly what people watch it for,” said Ginsburg.
The two guilds took this stance against the historic ceremony because the awards show would bring in high ratings and large profits for NBC, one of the networks the writers are striking against.
“It’s wonderful that the SGA and everyone are all supporting us and I think it just goes the extra mile they’re standing side by side with us on this,” said Alburger.
Trade magazine Variety reported yesterday that because of the likely low attendance, the Golden Globes may not be telecast at all, in which case writers and actors would be permitted by their respective guilds to attend. The Screen Actor’s Guild awards, which takes place Jan. 27 after the Golden Globes and before the Oscars, has been granted a waiver by the WGA because of the SGA’s support of the strike.
No matter what happens next with the strike, it seems the whole country will be watching to see when their favorite shows and stars will be returning to a nearby television set.