Solidarity

I thought about skipping this column. I wanted to show solidarity with the members of the Writers Guild of America, who went on strike this week after failing to reach a deal with studios. In the end, though, my sense of devotion to my loyal readers, all baker’s dozen of you, was simply too strong. Also, this was a light week for letters to the editor and I couldn’t find anything else to put in this space. This strike is serious business. According to Reuters, the motion picture and television industry generates $30 billion in annual economic activity for Los Angeles County alone and the U.S. film and television industry, which will in many cases be idled by the strike, employs 200,000 people. Economists estimate a 22-week writers’ strike in 1988 cost the entertainment industry roughly $500 million. That doesn’t even take into account the impact on the poor families who might now be forced to hold a conversation while they eat dinner. You can’t put a price on that kind of psychological trauma. Some of the strike’s effects have already started to show up. Late night talk shows went to re-runs on Monday. Apparently Jay Leno needs a full staff of writers to prepare him for reading wacky headlines. (City council runs out of time to discuss shorter meetings? Precious!) The film industry, which prepared for a possible strike by stockpiling scripts, will likely not be affected. But the impact elsewhere could be significant. Though the producers of television series typically work ahead a long strike could mean more reruns for prime time shows. This could actually be good news for fans who want to catch up with their favorite shows. It could be even better news for viewers looking for an excuse to finally stop watching Two and a Half Men. If there are too many reruns we could ultimately lose some of the weaker shows on the schedule. If things get really bad we could find ourselves cutting down to just six or seven CSI series and only a couple of dozen Law and Order spin offs. It’s the law of the television jungle. Ultimately, the strike could mean more reality shows popping up in the months ahead. In other words, the studios might finally listen to my “Strand seven unstable strangers on an island, make them dance and have an angry British guy yell at them” pitch. I call it Real Dancing with the Idol. It’s going to be huge. I shouldn’t make jokes, though. This strike is serious business for the people involved. And it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for the writers. According to most reports all they really want is a bigger cut of the roughly $315 million expected to be spent this year on Internet downloads of movies and television shows. That’s a whole lot of money. And who are we to say the writers don’t deserve every penny? Without the talented members of the Writers Guild, after all, we wouldn’t have quality television fare like Cavemen, the half-hour sitcom based on a series of insurance ads, or Cane, which is about Jimmy Smits being sexy and probably evil or something. I haven’t actually watched the show, but the commercials are pretty annoying. It’s hard to know how this will play out from here. The smart thing would be for everyone involved to work out their differences and get back to business before Americans realize they can fill the time they used to spend watching TV by reading a book or taking a walk, a process that by most estimates will take until somewhere in mid-2013. Then again, this is the entertainment industry we’re talking about. It’s hard to count on an industry that keeps Rob Schneider gainfully employed to ever do the smart thing.


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