1 post tagged “wga”
I don't really need to add another post to the sure-to-be thousands of posts about this, but the WGA (west) strike is over as of last night.
I'm glad the strike's over in that I'll finally have something new to watch on TV. I'm not much of a fan of reality shows.
When I was at Sundance, I met and spoke with David Blue, who plays Cliff on Ugly Betty (he also acts in other shows). He seemed a little concerned about the future of his character and the show. I asked him if they had any episodes "in the can". He said they didn't and were just waiting for the strike to end. So all-in-all the end to the strike is probably good for most of the people working in Hollywood.
The strike was actually beneficial, in my opinion, to certain groups such as independent producers, filmmakers, bloggers and podcasters. Since no new content was being created for TV, anyone who creates original content was filling a vast chasm of need left open by the strike. Soon that chasm will be closing, but hopefully the audience is now more aware of alternative sources of content such as podcasts and independent film. Nielson (the firm that monitors people's viewing habits) even says that many viewers won't go back to their old TV viewing habits that they had before the strike.
What's the most surprising to me however, is how little the mainstream media has said about this so far. This should be front page news. It should be a headlining story in TV news. The strike's been affecting everyone who watches American TV, which is basically every American. So why is the media so quiet about it? Maybe they're just slow (old media, you know) and I should give them more time to put together their story. If I don't hear more (I expect to be inundated) by tomorrow I'll assume conspiracy. ;)
I first learned about the end of the strike on the Today Show this morning. In between telling about other stories rapid fire style, Ann Curry said something to the effect of, "and last night the WGA members voted to end the strike" and then she rolled right into the next story! What???!!!!
They gave no indication of what the actual result was. Did the writers get anything they wanted (the reason they were striking)? When will they go back to work? When will we start seeing new shows? Nothing.
As of right now, there's nothing on the front page of cnn.com, msn.com, or yahoo.com. Everyone seems to have a story about Uno the Beagle that won Westminster, though.
Here are a couple sites I found that actually do talk about the end to the strike:
The Economist
AdWeek
The Hollywood Reporter, of course
Variety, of course
In those last two, the story is actually front page news (shown prominently on the homepage), as you would expect.
Then on the WGA site, there are a bunch of stories about it. Go to those sites to find out how the writers made out.
In summary, I'm not sure if the writers got enough to make up for potential future losses that were caused by the strike. Hopefully the little guys in Hollywood will end up with a better deal than they would have had before the strike. Also, hopefully independent producers, podcasters, etc. were able to attract some new viewers, listeners, etc. during the lull in new content form Hollywood.
