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<\/p>\nA quote from Shakespeare I think, but the basic idea behind it is that a dark hour is upon us. The Writers Guild of America is going to strike, immediately. At stake is a slightly higher portion of DVD (from 4 cents per disc to 8 cents) and new (online) media sales. A total amount of under $100 million a year (divided over some 12.000 writers), that the industry is not willing to budge on (earning $24.4 billion last year alone on domestic DVD sales, so we’re talking about a total of less than %1).
\nLast time this happened was in 1988 (a 22 week duration), and it left me scarred. For instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation has a 2 month season premiere delay, and produced The Child (a recycled script from ST: Phase II) and the most horrible episode ever in Star Trek history, flashback clip show Shades of Gray. So deservingly, the industry lost an estimated $500 million income (less advertisement sold, 10% declined viewership). And I wasn’t a savvy TV watcher back then anyway.
\nBut now that I am, the direct impact will be:
\n– Immediately, no more late night shows. Colbert, Jay, Conan, they’ll be off the air, as late night shows depend the most on writers.
\n– Soon, no more sitcoms, as they rely a lot on on-set rewrites.
\n– No nicely finished TV seasons. Most shows have some 5 episodes in the post production pipeline, and maybe a few scripts ready to shoot. But come Jan\/Feb 2008, it’s bye bye scripted television, hello news, game and reality shows.
\n– Canceled new running shows. Good shows with low ratings will never get a chance to grow into surprise hit shows.
\n– Canceled new upcoming shows. Heroes: Origin seems to be a victim already, put on indefinite hold before scripts have been written (but promised to advertisers a few months ago, to lure in advertisement money for a mid 2008 launch)
\n– If the strike takes long enough, say goodbye to pilot season. Next year will run on current shows, including the horrible ones that should’ve been axed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Are you as scared as I am ?<\/p>\n
Update: It was unclear what multitalented actors\/writers\/producers\/directors would do during the strike (since their added SGA\/DGA allegiance), but big names like J.J. Abrams, James L. Brooks and Tina Fey joined the picket lines, while stars like Jay Leno and Julia Louis-Dreyfus showed up for support.<\/em><\/p>\n Update2: Next victim: 24. No 7th season for this TV season (about 1\/3 filmed though). Fox bets on safe and moves it to the next TV season.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A quote from Shakespeare I think, but the basic idea behind it is that a dark hour is upon us. The Writers Guild of America is going to strike, immediately. At stake is a slightly higher portion of DVD (from 4 cents per disc to 8 cents) and new (online) media sales. A total amount […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kimputer.is-a-geek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}