Writer's Strike Thread

[Khan]

Actually...? No, I don't.

I think Babs Bloom brought in Griffith for the same reason she brought in Latham: she was familiar w/ his work at ABC. And I think he's ascended in the wake of the strike, b/c 1) he was willing to go Fi-Core, and 2) "acting EP" Steve Kent was familiar w/ him from SANTA BARBARA.

And...that's about it.

RE: Nancy Curlee - I hope she isn't scabbing for any soap. As passionate as she is about writing, I hope she's just as passionate about supporting the WGA.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I highly doubt Curlee would ever scab. Isn't corporate/network interferences one of the many reasons she refuses to come back to soaps? If so, I don't think she'd like to have her work extremely micro-managed as a scab writer in any form.

[Sylph]

From Times Online

January 18, 2008

Hollywood strike 'nears end', as studios cave in

Chris Ayres, Los Angeles

After a cancelled Golden Globes ceremony, a shut-down in production of America’s most popular TV shows and an estimated $1 billion of losses, the end of Hollywood’s crippling ten-week-old writers’ strike finally appeared to be in sight last night.

Hopes were raised when the Directors Guild of America, headed by the British former Coronation Street director Michael Apted, announced that it had reached a tentative agreement on the terms of its new contract, which will come into effect when the old one expires in June.

If the deal is signed - as seems likely - it will put pressure on the striking Writers Guild of America to end its current work-stoppage and agree to similar terms, saving next month’s Oscars ceremony from cancellation for the first time in its 80-year history.

The WGA’s contract with Hollywood’s studios ran out in November and the strike was called five days later, when talks between the two sides broke down acrimoniously, largely over a failure to agree on royalties for TV episodes and movies shown online. Since then, the WGA has reached temporary ‘strike waiver’ agreements with David Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, and some independent movie studios, including Tom Cruise’s United Artists.

Other than that, there has been a complete stalemate in negotiations, with the WGA’s last talks with the studios breaking down on December 7.

The DGA’s agreement - which was worked out long in advance during private ‘back-channel’ discussions - will also provide a blueprint for the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract with the studios also ends in June.

So far, the writers and the actors have been united, with actors refusing to cross writers’ picket-lines to attend the Globes, hence the cancellation of the ceremony.

The most crucial part of last night’s DGA’s statement was that it had worked out a formula under which its members would be paid for TV episodes and movies ‘streamed’ on the internet.

“Two words describe this agreement - groundbreaking and substantial,” said Gil Cates, chairman of the Directors Guild of America’s negotiating committee. “There are no rollbacks of any kind.”

The studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, put out their own statement yesterday, saying that “our industry’s creative talent will now participate financially in every emerging area of new media.”

It is thought that the deal increases both wages and so-called ‘residuals’ - payments for repeats - for each year of the contract.

It also gives the DGA jurisdiction over TV shows and movies created specifically for the internet and doubles royalties from iTunes downloads while establishing rates for streamed TV episodes and movies that are supported by embedded advertising.

The WGA will have to get the support of its 12,500 members, many of whom have suffered financially because of the strike, before ending the current industrial action.

Many writers are thought to be eager to get back to work, especially given the looming recession and the ongoing housing crisis, which has hit Los Angeles particularly hard. Members of the WGA range from the unemployed, who survive on residuals cheques, to the multimillionaire creators of America's most successful scripted TV franchises.

The DGA’s tentative agreement with the studios came only five days after formal talks began. It is thought that the directors spent $2 million researching the potential value of new media over the next decade, and held a series of preliminary meetings with key studio heads to establish a basis for the formal talks.

The DGA’s existing contract covers 13,000 members, including directors, assistant directors and unit production managers.

[dragonflies]

A Real Cliffhanger

Could the writers' strike kill the ailing soap-opera genre? Tune in to see.

Alice Ann McHenry has watched soap operas nearly every weekday of her life since she was 15 years old. She's now 52. "They're my main source of entertainment," says McHenry, who lives in Charlotte, N.C., and is a devotee of "Days of Our Lives," "The Young and the Restless," "As the World Turns" and "General Hospital." If she has to go somewhere during the day, she makes sure to tape episodes on her new VCR. The characters, she says, "are like family. I like the couples, like ['Days of Our Lives' '] Bo and Hope. I like the fact that they've held steady all these years." So it worried her when, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, "The Young and the Restless" uncharacteristically went into reruns for a few days. "I didn't mind seeing Victoria fall into a coma again," she says. "But they haven't done that before that I can remember."

With writers crafting picket signs instead of dialogue since they went on strike in November, most, if not all, of the eight daytime soaps currently on the air will have run out of WGA-member-written scripts by February. That prospect might not be devastating to a prime-time show like "Lost," but it could mean lost audiences for daytime soaps. With their serialized plots and dependence on cliffhangers, soap operas don't have much wiggle room. If storylines are interrupted, audiences have been known to tune out for good. Which is why many producers in the past month have stealthily turned to using scab writers who aren't members of the Writers Guild of America. "When the lights go out, the lights go out," says one network head of daytime programming, who confirmed the use of nonunion writers and requested anonymity talking about the issue. "History has shown us that when we suffer long pre-emption there's an erosion that's very hard to recover from." Network execs saw it happen during the writers' strike in 1988, and again in the mid-1990s, when the O. J. Simpson trial offered the promise of more riveting drama than anything on "One Life to Live."

Even if the strike is settled soon (there was hope of that after the Directors Guild agreed to a new contract last week), that won't cure the soaps' ills. Thanks to competition from cable TV and the Internet, and the fact that fewer women stay home, audiences have been defecting faster than the patients at "General Hospital" (which has never had as big a hit as when 30 million viewers tuned in to watch Luke and Laura wed in 1981). In the soapy heyday of the mid-1980s, some 50 million people—mostly women—were following at least one show, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Today the average soap gets fewer than 1 million viewers a day. NBC last year announced that "Days of Our Lives," which debuted in 1965, was "unlikely" to continue past 2009 when its license agreement expires. It also canceled "Passions" after an eight-year run, replacing it with an extra hour of the more profitable "Today" show.

Since the strike began, producers have been keeping the shows on life support by writing the scripts themselves—and in some cases using nonunion writers to do it. A handful of WGA scribes have gone on what is known in industry parlance as "fi-core" status, short for "financial core," a little-used and controversial measure whereby they resign from the guild in order to go back to work, but continue to pay union dues in exchange for certain benefits like health insurance. "They're essentially writing in secret, sticking scripts under doors and over the transom," says Karen Harris, a writer for "General Hospital" and chair of the WGA's daytime-television committee. Producers of several shows contacted by NEWSWEEK declined to comment.

Whenever the writers and producers make their peace, the hope is that the Internet can save the genre. NBC released its newest soap, "Coastal Dreams" (sponsored entirely by Stayfree Maxi Pads), exclusively on the Internet. That, says the WGA, is why it's critical for soap writers—and there are about 70—to support the strike and hold out for a set percentage of profits for work that airs on the Internet, something networks have resisted. "It's critical for us," says Harris. "Serialized dramas are going to be the vanguard" for Internet programming.

In the meantime, networks have been trying to revamp their shows in hopes of retaining viewers and possibly even attracting new ones. Last year ABC took a page from the Fox hit "24" for "General Hospital" when it featured a 16-episode story, set in real time, about an explosion and hostage crisis. In late February, CBS aims to launch new versions of "Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns": many more scenes will be shot outdoors or on location, in hopes that more-dynamic visuals will attract younger viewers.

But even soap stalwarts are beginning to accept that such changes may not be enough. Veteran Arleen Sorkin, best- known for her role as "Days of Our Lives" ' lovable Calliope Jones, remembers the days when her grandmother's biscuit recipe "literally said, 'Put the biscuits in the oven before "Edge of Night" and then take them out before the start of "Secret Storm",' " she says. "It really makes me sad what's happening." It also pains fans like Alice Ann McHenry. If all the characters she's come to love and hate were to disappear for good, "it would make me very, very unhappy," she says. "These shows really do mean a lot to a lot of people." Yes, to a lot of people, but maybe not to enough.

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/96365

[Y&RWorldTurner]

http://www.zap2it.com/tv/news/zap-nbccutsb...0,6689580.story

[juppiter]

Yeah, NBC, that's not innovation, it's stupid. I have to say that NBC deserves this. They basically rode out the 90s on Friends, Seinfeld, Will&Grace, Frasier, and ER. When those ran out one by one they were royally fucked.

[Khan]

Word, juppiter.

[dragonflies]

Hmm looks to me like NBC as a network just wants to die altogether......

Interesting that CBS is launching new versions of ATWT and GL

[Khan]

^ I know! You'd think CBSD would want to do this for Y&R or even B&B.

[DaytimeFan]

Well the thing with Y&R and B&B is that CBS doesn't have that much say in either of them (especially B&B: Babs can call all she likes but Brad just leaves the phone off the receiver). Also, Y&R and B&B are the top soaps with B&B the most watched soap in the world, they probably figure 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.

Shame on Newsweek, that article stated that soaps average less than a million viewers a day which is absolutely false.

[Ryan]

Newsweek needs to get their facts right....it was myNetwork TV's primetime soaps that barely averaged a million viewers a day.

[AddictedToSoaps]

Yup, It's supposedly going to make the shows much cheaper to produce. Hopefully the shows won't get cheaper as a result.

[Khan]

Heh. That's good.

If it'll be anything like Lizzie's snuff film room party, then I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you.

[AddictedToSoaps]

Ohh believe me, I'm not! GL always disappoints, no matter how promising something sounds.

[Dan]

CBS doesn't have much pull over GL or ATWT either, considering they are both owned by Procter and Gamble productions. My understanding is that this is more of a PGP-sponsored initiative.