Another Strike: Would the Soaps Survive?

[remos]

It's a simple matter of getting with the times. If you assume that your ONLY market of importance is Continental US at an elevated price, then you miss out on the Billions of potential customers Internationally, who have a lot more disposable income than the majority of Americans do in this current economy (just to call a spade a spade). Once material is digital it's no more cost for one transfer of that digital content than for thousands, so the potential for income earning is exponential.

And this is from someone who knows more about the Treaty of Worms than she will EVER know about marketing.

[R Sinclair]

Exactly.

The grey period is late December. That's when scab script writers were using Guza's outlines. By January it was all scab. The strike didn't commence until November 5, 2007. Anything that aired that same month was most definitely written by Guza and his team.

[Sylph]

Of course.

If they were smart, instead of isolating the US even more, they should've stage an assault on emerging markets. Like India or China. Or even Russia.

[remos]

Okay, so my timeline was off. I was beginning to think I didn't know what I was talking about (not that that's ever stopped me, mind you, but it's not my "happy place").

Thanks for the correction.

[remos]

People actually use America TV to learn English..... Now, while the Academic Snob in me cringes about that, the reality is a huge part of the world will pay dearly for the privilege of having US TV in their homes. When I was in NIcaragua a number of years ago the Telenovella was not the only thing they wanted access to.

[DaytimeFan]

Really interesting stuff, La Flannery sounds absolutely pissed about AFTRA...I realise that SAG is a political hot mess of its own, but DAMN, it's better than most of the soaps!

[marceline]

Soaps going to some version of "seasons" has always seemed like the best way to deal with financial realities. Either that or go to 3-4 eps a week with repeats/classic episodes/informercials/whatever for the remaining days.

As for a strike, I'm up for anything that shakes off the dead weight. Can they start tomorrow?

[Sylph]

I really fail to see why something hasn't been done about it. Especially considering the amount of profit involved.

Why 4 episodes a week instead of half-hour episodes 5 days a week?

[remos]

But it won't shake them off - that's the problem. New writers won't have a place to go, but the ones we'd probably like to see replaces are buried in there like ticks and won't leave. Those are the ones who've amassed enough in personal finances that they can sustain themselves for a prolonged strike. Younger, fresher writers don't have that backing.

[remos]

I don't either. It's basic Capitalism 101.

The shows would be lost - it would take half that time just to run the opening and closing credits. As it is hour long shows are really only around 40 minutes long.

[marceline]

Fisrt, I just don't like the idea of half-hour soaps. I don't think you can get much storytelling accomplished in that time span but admittedly that's a personal prejudice.

I've never thought that going to half-hour shows would reduce costs that much because so much of the money is just sunk cost. When you "turn on" the lights the bulk of the energy goes to heating them up so whether they're on for 6 hours or 9 isn't as big a difference as we think. The make up person still needs to slather on the same amount of makeup. The wardrobe people are still taking care of the same clothes. Are crew members hourly? If so that would save money. But would there be any significant drop in the money spent on positions like writers, directors, EPs? (That's a serious question.)

It just seems to me that going from an hour to a half hour doesn't cut your costs as much as cutting 30-40% of the shows you'd need to produce. But this is all guesswork on my part. I'm sure someone can (and will) tell me how off base I am.

[R Sinclair]

Title card, :05 music cue. BAM! Problem solved.

Primetime dramas, such as Grey's Anatomy, don't have 53 second long openings the way All My Children or General Hospital does.

[marceline]

They should do that now. It would solve the problem of woefully outdated openings like AMC's. Of course the credits would run all the way through the show. That used to drive me crazy with Lost. We'd be 20 minutes into the show and still seeing names pop up at the bottom of the screen.

[Sylph]

I also wonder how would you 'disperse' the episodes? Would it be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday? Or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?

A script fee for a 30 minute soap is about $1800 and $3300 for an hour-long one. That's the minimum.

It's $5000 for 90 minutes.

[Money]

I agree with this. Let's suppose to say they implemented scab writers during the strike. Scabs who actually thought outside the box and shock oh shock, ratings started to rise. Regardless of the success, the minute the strike is over execs will return to the previous HW and that glimmer of success will be gone. I don't think there has been one scab writer who continued when the last strike occurred but that's a different issue. The bottom line is that change starts from the top. Without change the genre will continue to die with or without a strike. A strike will simply expedite it's death.