US TV Writers Strike

As many of you will know, the threat of a writers strike in the US is threatening to halt production on many of America's top shows.


Live topical shows like The Daily Show and the various late-night talk shows are expected to be affected first, but already NBC have halted production on spin-off series Heroes: Origins - before it even begins.


Scripts have been stockpiled to an extent though and networks have enough content produced to see them through to early New Year - but if a strike goes ahead the second half of many latest series could be severely affected. The last strike lasted 22 weeks.


How this affects UK TV is the question I ponder here - especially now broadcasters are increasingly airing US shows within a week or two of their US airing, meaning that when the US networks run out of episodes, so do they!


On the other hand it has been suggested some UK shows could end up plugging the gap on US networks alongside reality shows and re-runs.

I do hope this doesn't affect Grey's Anatomy.

They haven't taken an idea ball out of the manatees' tank have they??

lol

Have you seen any of the Imagationland triology yet?

Greedy sods. What else do you expect me to say?

You love to see more testcards?

Erm...what have test cards got to do with anything?

It's always the way that those with the most always want more. In this country, unions like Equity and the BMU seem to have escaped or got round the Thatcherite laws (quite possibly because their high-earning members are personal friends of those in power?) while the ordinary man's unions like the NUM or Bectu are crushed into near-oblivion. But the creative unions in America are clearly more powerful which is why things have got to this stage.

The answer is simple - replace these writers with non-union labour.

Not yet but it's in my torrent list!!

[quote="nodnirG kraM"]
Not yet but it's in my torrent list!! [/quote

Without giving anything away, personally speaking, it starts off poorly but turns out to be the best I've seen from that show.

Precisely.

In the context of the debate I trust.

That's a rather glib response to an extremely complex issue.

One aspect alone of the previous strike dealt with those staff who trawl hours of footage from reality programming to create a weekly narrative and story flow for some of the most successful programmes (in the genre) on the air. Rather than being considered "writers" (which in effect they are), they were being paid as researchers and as such don't qualify for pesky things like reasonable salary or pension plans.

These people work to create shows which make the studios millions of dollars. There's plenty of money there, it just isn't being reasonably apportioned.

There's much more than just that example being discussed.

Not everything can be solved with right-wing union smashing, Simon. Sometimes strike action is required to say, "enough is enough", or in this case, "not enough".

Head writers may command high salaries, but not everyone involved is treated that way.

Perhaps you would feel differently at the thought of being pensionless in your dotage?

EDIT: And another thing - you clearly don't know what Equity minimum wage is, otherwise you wouldn't be accusing jobbing actors of being fat-cats.