The writers’ strike is over, and guess what? We all survived.
Back around November 5, when the Writers Guild of America first called a strike against the major entertainment studios, there were almost hysterical reports in the news media — what are we going to do without new episodes of our favorite TV programs? Like, Omigosh!
The January 25 Entertainment Weekly even had a special “Strike Survival Guide” issue with cover of a bearded Conan O’Brien (who, along with David Letterman, used the time off the screen to watch his facial hair grow) that boasted “67 tips to beat the entertainment dry spell.” One of the tips? TV cooking diva Rachael Ray, who has built a media empire on how to cook meals in less than 30 minutes, proposed spending 120 minutes preparing a beef stew dish.
It turns out there have been more interesting things to do than making labor-intensive stew or watching hair grow.
First, there was football. The New England Patriots capped a perfect season by losing to the New York Giants in a beautiful closing-minutes drive. This ended up being the highest rated Super Bowl of all time, and Fox earned a whopping $250 million on all of those $2.7 million 30-second advertisements.
Second–and this makes us seem much more high-minded–there is presidential politics. Turnouts for caucuses and primaries have been at record levels almost everywhere (and Iowans can give themselves a little pat on the back for getting this started).
It’s exciting to have more people talking about who might be the new president rather than what happened to the housewives on Wisteria Lane or that island where all of those people are Lost. Even the cable news networks are attracting large audiences for their election coverage.
Perhaps it’s because this political season, there are real choices for Americans. I’m reminded of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 where he reported on the Nixon-McGovern race. Thompson wrote a couple sentences that sum up the usual American electoral experience better than anything else I’ve ever read.
He wrote that Americans are often told, “we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.” This time it feels different — maybe more like a Ford, Lexus, MINI Cooper, Toyota Prius, and Subaru. [Feel free to use your own list of cars to complete the comparison.]
The end of the strike now means that unlike NBC’s lame attempt at a Golden Globes show, ABC will have a fully scripted Academy Awards broadcast on Sunday evening, February 24. After the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards show is television’s biggest payday, so it’s no surprise that Disney (which owns ABC) CEO Robert Iger was one of the main studio heads who became involved in softening the studio position.
Overall, the strike gave the writers the necessary leverage in making their case. One writer told the Deadline Hollywood Daily blog “Like everyone else, I have concerns about the deal, but overall I think it’s a win for us, and I have no doubt that it’s a deal we never would have come close to receiving without the strike.”
The biggest issue for the writers was establishing a system of residuals for television and movies distributed through the Internet. The writers weren’t going to get sold short with the development of a new distribution route.
In the 1980s, the writers signed contracts that established what turned out to be an obscenely low royalty rate for the then-emerging home video format. The studios made out well — they now make the majority of their movie revenue on video sales and rentals (box office receipts are a distant second). But, writers only received about four cents in royalties for each $20 DVD sold.
With this agreement, the writers got raise on their DVD royalties and a foothold on the Internet market, and will earn reasonable royalties for streaming television programs and movie downloads.
The Guild also wanted to include writers of reality programs (yes, reality programs do have writers!) under the union contract for pay and benefits, but this didn’t make it into the agreement. Look for this issue to come back when the new contract expires in 2011.
For now, new episodes for this season’s comedies and dramas won’t be ready until April. But who cares? We have a wonderful political drama that will carry us through November.
Photo: courtesy Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetgordon/1940722505/