How long is Hogan's contract, anyway? I think Corday can fire writers before their contracts are up, he just still has to pay them until its up.

Listen All:

If Corday wants Sheffer gone,he's gone. Sheffer might be back because of guild rules etc, but it will only be for the remainder of his cycle.

At the conclusion of the 1988 strike, P&G had to rehire Harding LeMay who had been hired a few weeks before the strike started but his material hadn't really aired (Sheri Anderson was the headwriter pre strike). NBC brought in Swajeski and company and were thrilled with her work. They brought back Lemay for 9 weeks exactly then dumped him and installed Swajeski and a bunch of writers who had never written in soaps before (Mimi Leahey, Janet Iacubuzio, Nerissa Radel, Michael Zazlow and Susan Hufford). Swajeski wrote teh show for 4 years.

Sheffer was saddled with a lot of stuff beyond his control at Days, but the stuff he did have control over was god-awful. He didn't get Days according to Sony and Corday and they want him out.

We disagree.

IMO, the material that actually made it to screen was great. It's the stuff that Corday screwed with that was God-awful, including TTK and The Vendetta, two storylines that went on at thesame time that were awful.

Listen All:

If Corday wants Sheffer gone,he's gone. Sheffer might be back because of guild rules etc, but it will only be for the remainder of his cycle.

At the conclusion of the 1988 strike, P&G had to rehire Harding LeMay who had been hired a few weeks before the strike started but his material hadn't really aired (Sheri Anderson was the headwriter pre strike). NBC brought in Swajeski and company and were thrilled with her work. They brought back Lemay for 9 weeks exactly then dumped him and installed Swajeski and a bunch of writers who had never written in soaps before (Mimi Leahey, Janet Iacubuzio, Nerissa Radel, Michael Zazlow and Susan Hufford). Swajeski wrote teh show for 4 years.

Sheffer was saddled with a lot of stuff beyond his control at Days, but the stuff he did have control over was god-awful. He didn't get Days according to Sony and Corday and they want him out.

We'll have to disagree about that. I think Hogan "gets" Days just fine. Family, history, drama, romance.... yup I'd say Hogan "gets" DAYS. IMO

Jen

The big test will be to see how well Latham gets on with Josh Griffith when she returns since Griffith was given so much power during the strike. Will there be a power struggle that forces Latham out? Anyone remember what happened to AW during the 88 strike, when Donna Swajeski took and and when it was time for Harding LeMay to come back, he left after a month because Swajeski was used to her the power she had during the strike as Head Writer.

And we might see a similar situation to what happened when LML first came on board as head writer. Initially, when she first came on, LML kept Kay Alden and Jack Smith on as co-head writers. But as the months passed and LML flexed her muscle, first Smith and then Alden were ousted from the show. And given how, IIRC, LML CHOSE to stop her show-running duties when the strike began and was not required to by the terms of the strike, Griffith, who stayed loyal to the show while LML and her staff of family and friends were picketing, might get the support of TPTB in such a power struggle.

I really can't see all 18 of Latham's friends coming back, that's way too much of an expense and is the biggest writing team in daytime at the moment.

And if they're brought back (since it's never been reported anywhere that the whole staff was fired), I wonder if perhaps they, too, might not be comfortable sticking around once they realize their pal Lynn doesn't hold all the power at the top anymore, leading to them seeking greener pastures (and maybe following their "leader") over time?

I guess I'll have to disagree LOL. I think Hogan was a bad fit for Days

Oh dear, this should be a very interesting week to see what goes on behind the scenes at our soaps...

any chance Criwkly and Brash (spelling?) would come back or has Corday pissed them of along with ever other decent possibility?

Anyone know anything about who returned to work today and who didn't?

Received this as a comment on my MySpace page from a friend of mine --

Look what I just found on Dustins Days Of Our Lives Page: Update! Days Writers Re-Hired?

Deadline Hollywood Daily is reporting that at the WGA East's meeting this weekend on the resolution to the writers strike, that it was announced that the fired "Days" writers would all be getting their jobs back, because of technicalities that a fired striking writer must be replaced by another striking writer, not scab writers.

Hopefully this is true and Hogan and the other writers fix Corday & Dena Higley's mistake and dont let Brandon & Martha leave!

UGH...

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/f...pears-be-sight/

WGA strike’s end appears to be in sight

Kate Stanhope, A&E Assistant Editor (Contact)

Published: Monday, February 11, 2008

After 14 weeks and an estimated economic impact of $1 billion, the Writers Guild of America strike may finally be coming to a close.

The guild’s leaders, including the presidents of the east and west branches of the guild as well as the head of the negotiating committee, held a press conference Sunday announcing their unanimous vote in favor of the tentative deal reached with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers last week.

The press conference came a day after the guild held meetings in New York and Los Angeles to present and discuss the tentative deal with striking writers.

With the leaders backing the deal, the entire guild membership will now vote on Monday and Tuesday to lift the strike as part of a 48-hour vote, which could end the strike by Wednesday.

The deal would then be formally ratified and the contract would last three years, until July 2011.

While the strike is not officially over, many in the industry appear optimistic that the 10,000 members of the guild will vote for the deal. Entertainment Weekly reported that the deal was met with “applause” while CNN stated the deal received “resounding support” from members on Saturday.

“I think it’s a foregone conclusion that the membership will ratify quite strongly,” said Richard Walter, a screenwriting professor in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and a lifetime member of the writers guild.

2005 UCLA graduate Marina Alburger, a staff writer for the daytime soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” attended the meeting Saturday in Los Angeles and voiced similar expectations.

“This isn’t a perfect deal. It’s not wonderful, but it’s definitely an improvement over previous offers,” she said. “It sounded as if to me that people were responding positively to the gains we made even if they weren’t in all the areas we had hoped for.”

Some of the abandoned demands of the writers guild, such as including animated feature film writers and reality TV show writers in the guild, were dropped during informal negotiations.

“The writers would be facing a jurisdictional battle, and the studios don’t want to get in the middle ... so it was easy for (the writers) to drop it because it wasn’t going to happen,” said Howard Suber, a professor emeritus from the producers program at the film school.

The deal, however, is said to include resolutions on most of the writers’ key demands and is heavily based off of the Directors Guild of America’s recent contract with producers, which was negotiated in the midst of the strike Jan. 17.

Key points of the tentative writers’ deal include establishing monetary compensation for Internet-streamed, ad-based television shows such as those on NBC.com and ABC.com as well as increasing compensation for paid Internet downloads of TV shows on formats such as iTunes.

Another indication of optimism from the writers is the announcement that showrunners will be returning to work today. The term showrunners refers to writers who are also producers on the television show they work on, such as Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” or Marc Cherry of “Desperate Housewives.”

“I don’t think the writers have any option but to accept whatever deal is on the table they have negotiated,” said Suber. “There are a lot of writers who are eager to get back to work who say, ‘OK, we’ve made our point and we’ve gotten a better deal, so let’s close this down.’”

The tentative deal is a result of three weeks of informal negotiations between the writers and producers that began the week after the directors’ contract was resolved. In past strikes, the directors’ contract had served as a template for the other unions in Hollywood, including the writers guild as well as the Screen Actors Guild.

Judging by the many similarities between the directors’ contract and the tentative deal for the writers, this time around seems no different.

“Once the (directors) made an agreement, there was a significant body opinion in the guild that the writers should accept something similar. ... Once there was movement on the part of the producers to do things like double DVD payments and paying something for Internet downloads, the guild couldn’t continue to hold out and be the spoiler,” Suber said.

Many believe the directors were able to reach an agreement including landmarks such as compensation from Internet streaming partly because of the momentum from the writers strike, which had then been going on for over two months. While the agreement between directors and producers seemed a positive note in the strike, media coverage and updates dwindled in the following weeks because of a media blackout imposed by the writers to ensure a less hostile environment.

In contrast, when formal negotiations were held from Nov. 26 to Dec. 7, both parties issued daily statements updating members on the status of the talks.

“What you had before the hiatus in negotiations was both sides issuing daily press releases, often within less than an hour of the meeting, grandstanding and attacking each other,” said Suber. “That doesn’t encourage either side to continue negotiating.”

Walter speculated on the positive effect of the recent media blackout on negotiations as well as the positive implications of the two sides’ agreement to the blackout.

“When they can agree to meet and talk and keep it out of the press and really agree to the blackout, maybe that means they’ll agree to those other issues that separate us now,” he said. “It’s much more adversarial when it’s out there in the media.”

Alburger said she noted the stress for writers walking the picket lines with no substantiative news of the talks.

“It was stressful to hear ‘a deal is coming, a deal is coming’ and not knowing who the source was,” she said. “But ultimately, at least they were talking, and that, to me, was the positive.”

Alburger was one of thousands forced to find alternative activities and jobs once the strike began Nov. 5. After the strike entered the new year, with no new negotiations in sight, Alburger spoke with the Daily Bruin about having to look for alternative means to support herself.

“I didn’t go to UCLA and earn a bachelor’s degree in communication studies to become a cocktail waitress or work at Nordstrom’s,” she said in January.

However, while it looks like Alburger will be able to return to her day job soon, she was able to find a productive and self-satisfying way to endure the strike.

“The struggle was trying to find something worthwhile to do with my time that was actually paid. I ended up donating my time to the Barack Obama campaign and spending more time with my church,” she said. “Luckily my parents are very supportive of my passion for being a writer, and they helped me out on that front.”

Now that the strike’s end is within reach, the focus has turned to when television shows forced into repeats because of the strike, such as “The Office” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” will be returning with new episodes to finish up the TV season and whether audiences will be back to watch them after weeks without new programming.

Because the TV season usually ends in May, only a few months away, some even wondered whether TV shows would come back at all this season, but Suber said he was sure of their imminent return as well as the return of their audiences.

“I think it’s very likely – we’re only into February,” he said. “I think there has been a general expectation that they would be back shortly. It’s like the summer hiatus: The audience knows the program isn’t on and, if they’re fans of the program, they’re eager to get back to it.”

I'm so bothered by Alburger's remarks during all of this. I'm sure she didn't say it with her nose in the air, but anyone should know that when you talk to the press, you need to be very careful the context you put your responses in. She gave all writers a bad name. I know many writers who are teaching during the strike, and Tom Caselo talked in his blog about happily going back to retail to pay his bills. I hate the impression this gives.

Edited February 11, 200817 yr by brimike

Sheffer was saddled with a lot of stuff beyond his control at Days, but the stuff he did have control over was god-awful. He didn't get Days according to Sony and Corday and they want him out.

I totally agree. Hogan and his insistence on making it the EJ Days of our Lives is the reason the show has been such a mess for the past year. The show has finally been watchable these past few weeks and I'm terrified of the thought of Hogan being allowed back in.

Isn't Marina a LML writer? That's not good news if she thinks she's returning. Oh dear! We're going to be on pins and needles waiting to see what happens to Y&R. I know if LML returns I refuse to watch. Not a single episode, unless she kills off a fave like Jill or Katherine. I'd have no choice but tune in for that, otherwise? LML can suck it.

I totally agree. Hogan and his insistence on making it the EJ Days of our Lives is the reason the show has been such a mess for the past year. The show has finally been watchable these past few weeks and I'm terrified of the thought of Hogan being allowed back in.

Uhm, have you read what Tom Casiello said in his interview with Toups?

Hogan could not write for characters such as Marlena, etc. because of whatever reason. We all know Corday was interfering there. He probably had no money left over from paying off JER's contract, so he had to stop using the key vets.

I don't understand why people continously blame Sheffer when we have ALL seen what he is capable of. We've seen it the past two autumns.

I don't think Corday is the big bad people think he is, the interviews with Peter Brash and Casiello have backed me up on that. Sheffer on the other hand did the exact same things with vets on ATWT and admitted he didn't know how to write for the over 40 crowd. Was Corday producing that show? No. It was Hogan and Chris Goutman.

Not using the vets, focusing on a few characters, tons of teens and lots of newbies is what Hogan was doing his last few years at ATWT.