Writer's Strike Thread

[MoTheGreat]

I say keep the Scabs. These recycle writers got to figure out that they are replaceable.

[exwriter]

I can't vouch for Megan's motives, but if you notice E&B are out there claiming to be going back to work with impunity -- Josh and the rest are at least just knuckling down and working. E&B are somehow out there in the media making it look like it's okay, like they have pure motives for... stealing. They have become figureheads in the press, and are specifically being asked about by reporters. Likely, the reporter did not have the other names. It's not like he was well-informed about the writers' side in his article. He totally misrepresented the idea of Financial Core -- as if it's something done with Guild permission. E&B are also career headwriters... the first to do something like this. Not defending Megan, but she knows everyone gets replaced in this business. And certainly E&B are no change for the better in any situation.

[Dooly]

Stealing from whom? Not defending E&B's work or their purported motives here -- just curious re: your logic. If you resent the fact that you're not collecting a paycheck while others are, that's quite understandable -- but fi-core writers like E&B aren't taking bread from your mouth by doing the job they were contracted to do pre-strike. (And while I very much get your argument that they are not sanctioned by the Guild, they certainly DO have permission.) If you agree with the cause but not the methods of the Guild and see jobs (including yours) likely being sacrificed as a result -- losses far exceeding long-term gains in all likelihood, IMO -- it may not be as clear a moral choice as you paint it to be. As a writer, you seem curiously unable to see the situation from any other point of view besides yours. If these "greedy scabs" weren't writing the soaps, would you prefer the shows just went off the air for a few months and lost another few million viewers who might never come back? What alternative do you propose?

Also, if the DGA got their deal as a result of an effective WGA strike effort as is being widely claimed in the media, how are those daytimers who have gone fi-core prolonging the strike, as the rhetoric always seems to have it?

[DaytimeFan]

MMT is bitter. Plain and Simple. She hates the fact that she was replaced and is calling out her replacements...Really this isn't a surprise at all, she's an ego driven bitch, she probably cannot stand the fact that ABC has given B&E such leeway in continuing to suck (hard).

Also, the Fi Core writers are not holding back a resolution to this strike. While daytime is going to get filled with Fi Core writers and scabs during the strike they are a tiny fraction of the writing population, absolutely minuscule. And the fact is that without those writers the soaps wouldn't survive and then all the ones on the picket line would have nothing to return to.

[Sylph]

Does anyone know how old is Garin Wolf and why did he choose to go financial core?

[dragonflies]

B&E are traitors IMO and I'm glad someone called them out, more people should......

[AddictedToSoaps]

So B&E may not have gone FiCore after all. Interesting.

ETA: Nvm

[Toups]

They did go Fi-Core or else McTavish wouldn't have blasted them.

[dragonflies]

Question: Since B&E went fi-core, can they be fired once the strike is over if the show chose to fire them?

[Y&RWorldTurner]

OK, the Y&R people are being really secretive about questions regarding the writer's strike and possibly questions about Latham returning.

Check out this new interview done by Nelson Branco at TV Guide Canada with Joshua Marrow

http://tvguide.sympatico.msn.ca/Sexiest+Du...8_NB.htm?isfa=1

[Adam]

Yep. They just can't be fired until the strike ends.

I say Frons gives them until after May sweeps.... (provided the strike is settled) and if ratings tank they get fired.... I am hoping anyway.

[Sylph]

I think All My Children will be cancelled in May.

[Sylph]

From The Sunday Times

January 13, 2008

Drama addicts face desperate times

The writers’ strike is starting to bite – and it’s not only Hollywood that will feel the pain

Stephen Armstrong

Things you won’t be doing this month – watching new episodes of Desperate Housewives or 24. As the Hollywood writers’ strike enters its third month, its effects are being felt on British televisions. And if you like to watch the frocks on the UK rerun of the Golden Globes ceremony, no luck there, either.

The hardest-hit audiences are the Kiefer Sutherland and 24 addicts. Fox insists on broadcasting the show nonstop in its entirety, one episode a week. With production halted, the show is suspended indefinitely. Channel 4 has moved Desperate Housewives, My Name Is Earl and Reaper back to March, Sky has only a few episodes of Prison Break in the can and Five staples such as CSI and House are 12 episodes short. Luckily for fans of US drama, The Sopranos and the BBC’s new Glenn Close series, Damages, had finished filming, so will stick to planned slots; Sky will start Lost again this month, and has a reasonably healthy number of episodes in store; and Grey’s Anatomy, on Five, is fine, as the UK is a series behind the USA.

In LA, predictions are that the strike might hold until March. Some series are clinging on. The Law and Order franchise, created by the former Hill Street Blues writer and Miami Vice producer Dick Wolf, is still shooting, with Wolf having stockpiled scripts and – rumour has it – handling rewrites himself. The late-night talk shows are also back, sans writers, leading to Jay Leno, a guild member, being in trouble for scripting his own material.

As most series slip from our screens, however, a more serious dearth can be glimpsed over their wounded bodies. The complex ecosystem of American television means that studios should be preparing pilot scripts for autumn 2008 about now. Pilot season – the eight-week period when networks decide which shows to commission – begins in mid-March. By then, most pilots should have been cast, with filming either started or ready to go. By early May, everyone should have a pretty good idea which new series will air when the important autumn season starts. As no scripts are being written, the networks have been calling in the producers of reality-television shows. “Ideas that had been rejected by every single studio are suddenly hot property,” says Edward Waller, editor of the trade bible C21.

Given that we are in the middle of a recognised golden age in American television, it seems a shame that American Idol and Carson Kressley’s version of How to Look Good Naked will now move centre stage. The glimmer of hope for fans of quality comes from cable. CBS is already considering “repurposed” (ie, sanitised) versions of risqué shows such as the serial-killer drama Dexter and the pot-smoking suburban series Weeds from its subsidiary channel Showtime. NBC is doing the same with Monk and Psych.

This is both good and bad for the Brits. Good for those who make reality television – an astonishing 50% of all reality formats are created here – and good, too, for Billie Piper, as Secret Diary of a Call Girl has been picked up by Showtime and looks set to make the repurposed jump to CBS. Everyone involved in making the series is insisting this has nothing to do with the writers’ strike – but as this would make Secret Diary the first-ever British show on primetime American network television, you do the math(s).

It’s bad, however, for the British film industry. So far, most movies in production will complete: Indiana Jones is still on his way this year. In anticipation of the walkout, some scripts were rushed through, which means that Transformers 2 will hit the screens in summer 2009. In autumn 2009, however, the big screen will start to feel the pinch, as scripts dry up. The directors’ and actors’ unions will begin the same set of negotiations over extra payments for work on DVD and the internet in June, so if the writers’ strike is still on then, Hollywood will basically be shut.

This has huge ramifications for the British film industry. According to the UK Film Council, foreign money – most of it coming from Hollywood studios – made up £570m of UK production in 2006, and had reached £330m by summer 2007. By comparison, UK funding was £148min 2006 and £80m by late summer 2007.

Our dependence on American money was shown in November, when Pinewood Shepperton saw 10% wiped off its share value after news that filming of the Da Vinci Code prequel Angels and Demons had been cancelled. If American movies dry up, swathes of the production sector – and even studios – could shut down.

The strike could even hit the Oscars next month. Actors seem unwilling to cross the picket line, hence the decision to turn the Globes into a press conference. Even if the actors were to break ranks, which seems highly unlikely, no writers would be turning up to the ceremony, which means it would not be allowed to broadcast movie footage.

One can only hope that the prospect of all that extra time given to hysterical winners to sob and thank would so horrify both sides that they’d wrap this thing up pronto.

[JamesF]

Minor point but there is no way in hell they can put Secret Diary of a Call Girl on CBS, with people so skittish about sexual content. I think an entire episode was based around a threesome. Dumb idea. That said I don't believe these shows should be repurposed at all -- it galls me to see them cut to ribbons for the sake of placating a small section of the audience that probably found Diagnosis Murder too close to the mark.

[RavenWhitney]

there are writers who don't agree with the way the strike is being handled. All of the announced daytime writers who went fi core are senior writers, most at the end of their careers. I'm hearing that Fran Myers, Garin Wolf, Pete Rich will retire soon anyway. Not sure about Tomlin. Griffith wants to be a producer/writer so he seized the opportunity. don't you think CBS/Sony brought him in because they knew (as most in the industry know) that Latham would walk completely out during the strike and they needed a writer/producer. Y&R is one show that planned for the strike. Latham was given full power over all hiring or firing except for Griffith; he was brought in and she had no power to hire/fire him.

I'm glad some writers are going back to work before the strike ends. WE need them to work these scripts and keep these shows going. Y&R has been infinitely better with the ficore/scabs. I've been able to watch every day since 12/26. Some stuff is dumb or boring but that's okay. The Nikki/victor stuff is fiercely written. Even DOOL's dialogue this week has been great; I actually was able to sit through all of 1/21 episode.

Many of the writers on the picket line got their starts during the last two strikes. Thom Racina openly writes on his website that he sold Monty is novel to use durng the strike then she hired him after it ended in 1981. I believe Laiman (a novelist first) also got her start after the 1981 strike (I don't know for a fact that she worked as a scab, but one can easly draw an inference. And after the 1988 strike, nearly the entire AW writing team was replaced by former producers (Iacubuzio), network execs (Swajeski), and sister of soap mag editor (Mimi Leahey), and actors (Michael Zazlow). Others joined that staff too who'd never been heard of before (Nerissa Radell). And P&G exec Janet STampfl became a writer. So, we can expect to see some new names in the coming months (after the strike ends). I.E. Linda Poindexter, Hope Harmel Smith and others we didn't anticipate.

My personal wish is that Nancy Curlee is scabbing at Y&R...

xoxoxo