Lifestyles

Prepare for Reruns

November 15, 2007

By Lee Engelhardt

A strike was called Monday, Nov. 5, due to a breakdown in talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

The breakdown occurred during meetings between the guild and AMPTP discussing the guild's Minimum Basic Agreement, which sets the minimum standards that all contracts must meet. The current dispute is over DVD residuals, which are currently based on a formula set up at the beginning of the video tape revolution, and repayment for content distributed over new media, such as the internet, for which there is no agreement.

These are issues that affect more than just American writers. In response to the current strike, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain has also called for a strike of their own, and other local groups such as the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) are watching closely to see how it may affect them down the road.

"A lot of what happens with the writers as they settle will reflect on what happens in May when negotiations start with SAG and AFTRA," explains MBU professor and AFTRA member, Ray Killebrew. This is the first strike in nearly 20 years. The last was in 1988, lasted for 22 weeks, and resulted in a 10 percent drop in audience size, a drop that the industry has yet to fully recover from even today.

The question most are asking is, 'How is all this going to affect me?' The simple answer is, prepare for reruns. This is not something many want to hear, particularly for some shows.

"I love 'Big Bang Theory,' and I've seen all the episodes like multiple times. I can't watch more reruns," said Jeff Easterwood.

Not everyone is concerned however. "I can really live without TV," said Curtis Dupree. "I've got some shows I watch, but it’s not going to bother me not to watch them."

Those who do watch may have already noticed their shows switching over. Evening shows filmed and aired on a day-to-day basis such as "Late Night with David Letterman" and "The Daily Show" were hit immediately. They may be hosted by comedians, but producing such shows every day requires a team of writers working together. With the beginning of the strike they were forced to switch to reruns.

Popular series such as "24," "Heroes," "Monk" and "Stargate Atlantis" are filmed well ahead of release so there is a decent catalogue of already finished episodes to work through, but they can't hold out forever.

In the end, as is usually the case, this will come down to the same thing it’s all about--money. Producers have the upper hand to some degree: they have their backlog for the moment and reruns will get them some income. And for the duration of the strike, many writers are without any real income, and not all of them are rich.

As Killebrew stated, "The producers can live without the writers for now, but the writers need to eat." Still, any disruption can result in great losses of revenue both long term and short term. Producers will be wary of losing more of their viewers as they did before.

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