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ltmurnauYoinked from today's Vancouver Sun:
How the screenwriters' strike will affect you
Alex Strachan, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, November 06, 2007
- Late-night talk shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Late Show with David Letterman will air repeats for the time being, while they undergo a behind-the-scenes makeover. When they return, perhaps as early as next week, expect longer celebrity interviews, and more of them. The comedians' monologues will be scaled back or cut entirely, and comedy sketches trimmed. Expect some recycled material. Letterman's Late Show, for example, could recycle old Top Ten lists.
- The next programs to feel the effect will be the daytime soap operas, which require scripts daily. New episodes will run out by the end of the month.
- New episodes of popular programs such as House and Grey's Anatomy will air this month and well into next. Reruns will air over the traditional Christmas and New Year break, and a handful of remaining new episodes will air in mid-January. After that, shows will go into repeats indefinitely.
- Midseason programs will return as scheduled, but may end early. Medium, 24, Lost, The New Adventures of Old Christine, the original Law & Order and Jericho are just a few that will return. They will be forced into reruns by early spring, however, if the strike lasts.
- Animated series such as Family Guy and The Simpsons will not be affected. They are written as much as a year in advance, because of the time-consuming process of animation.
- As the strike's effects take hold, expect more reality programs and game shows, including the return of Power of 10 and possible extra editions of Survivor and The Amazing Race. American Idol, already one of TV's most-watched programs, could potentially reach an even bigger audience.
- On the upside, Canadian dramas and comedies such as Intelligence, ReGenesis, Heartland and Little Mosque on the Prairie may gain wider exposure, both to a U.S. audience and here in Canada. Expect to see more British dramas and comedies on U.S. TV.
- If the strike drags on past spring and into next summer, expect to see reruns of retired series like Will & Grace and NYPD Blue.
- Moviegoers won't notice any effect until Christmas, 2008. After that, however, there could be a real dearth for a long time, as it takes a year or more to make most studio movies, once the script has been written.
- The networks appear dug in for the long haul. In a prepared statement, CBS chair and CEO Leslie Moonves said: "We're fully prepared to offer alternative programming options, and we . . . anticipate no material impact on the company for the remainder of the television season."
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
I don't understand this.
Why don't the networks access the legions of deluded viewers who think that because they've seen every episode of a given TV show ever aired, they could write scripts for new ones? What about all that shitty fanfic clogging the Tubes of the Internetwork?
They'd be happy to be scabs, they'd do it for a fraction of the price - hell, they'd even do it for free, just for the thrill of seeing their name on the screen for a quarter of a second.
There's quite a precedent - it all began with reality TV, as a way of generating content that was almost free. All the media outlets now regularly have "send us your video" sites and so forth, so that some goombah can stand in the path of an oncoming tornado with his cell phone camera, thus relieving a reporter of having to do the same with a cameraman. You don't have to pay the goombah, he's happy to say, "Awesome, I fuckin' shot that!" (to steal the title of that Beastie Boys film, assembled entirely from film their fans shot at concerts).
Yeah, all they need to do is set up a mailbox on the corporate website to accept e-mailed scripts, run them through some kind of formatting program, and print them off for the actors. I feel we're only a few years away from an actual "versificator", the novel-writing machine that George Orwell described in 1984. Remove humans from the process completely, until it's time to consume the product.
What about quality, you say? Well, I hadn't noticed much of that lately. This strike is all a squabble about division of sales and ad revenue. The networks have already said, "Well, if this goes on, we'll just go to reruns of the same crappy programs indefinitely, and when we get tired of that, there's two generations more of shitty archived TV to put on the air (we always wanted to see Hill Street Blues back on...)". Don't look for people finding other things to do with their time; most people will watch any old garbage. And I certainly wouldn't look for Little Mosque on the Prairie or (yech) Corner Gas to reach a significantly larger audience either - faint hope there!
How the screenwriters' strike will affect you
Alex Strachan, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, November 06, 2007
- Late-night talk shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Late Show with David Letterman will air repeats for the time being, while they undergo a behind-the-scenes makeover. When they return, perhaps as early as next week, expect longer celebrity interviews, and more of them. The comedians' monologues will be scaled back or cut entirely, and comedy sketches trimmed. Expect some recycled material. Letterman's Late Show, for example, could recycle old Top Ten lists.
- The next programs to feel the effect will be the daytime soap operas, which require scripts daily. New episodes will run out by the end of the month.
- New episodes of popular programs such as House and Grey's Anatomy will air this month and well into next. Reruns will air over the traditional Christmas and New Year break, and a handful of remaining new episodes will air in mid-January. After that, shows will go into repeats indefinitely.
- Midseason programs will return as scheduled, but may end early. Medium, 24, Lost, The New Adventures of Old Christine, the original Law & Order and Jericho are just a few that will return. They will be forced into reruns by early spring, however, if the strike lasts.
- Animated series such as Family Guy and The Simpsons will not be affected. They are written as much as a year in advance, because of the time-consuming process of animation.
- As the strike's effects take hold, expect more reality programs and game shows, including the return of Power of 10 and possible extra editions of Survivor and The Amazing Race. American Idol, already one of TV's most-watched programs, could potentially reach an even bigger audience.
- On the upside, Canadian dramas and comedies such as Intelligence, ReGenesis, Heartland and Little Mosque on the Prairie may gain wider exposure, both to a U.S. audience and here in Canada. Expect to see more British dramas and comedies on U.S. TV.
- If the strike drags on past spring and into next summer, expect to see reruns of retired series like Will & Grace and NYPD Blue.
- Moviegoers won't notice any effect until Christmas, 2008. After that, however, there could be a real dearth for a long time, as it takes a year or more to make most studio movies, once the script has been written.
- The networks appear dug in for the long haul. In a prepared statement, CBS chair and CEO Leslie Moonves said: "We're fully prepared to offer alternative programming options, and we . . . anticipate no material impact on the company for the remainder of the television season."
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
I don't understand this.
Why don't the networks access the legions of deluded viewers who think that because they've seen every episode of a given TV show ever aired, they could write scripts for new ones? What about all that shitty fanfic clogging the Tubes of the Internetwork?
They'd be happy to be scabs, they'd do it for a fraction of the price - hell, they'd even do it for free, just for the thrill of seeing their name on the screen for a quarter of a second.
There's quite a precedent - it all began with reality TV, as a way of generating content that was almost free. All the media outlets now regularly have "send us your video" sites and so forth, so that some goombah can stand in the path of an oncoming tornado with his cell phone camera, thus relieving a reporter of having to do the same with a cameraman. You don't have to pay the goombah, he's happy to say, "Awesome, I fuckin' shot that!" (to steal the title of that Beastie Boys film, assembled entirely from film their fans shot at concerts).
Yeah, all they need to do is set up a mailbox on the corporate website to accept e-mailed scripts, run them through some kind of formatting program, and print them off for the actors. I feel we're only a few years away from an actual "versificator", the novel-writing machine that George Orwell described in 1984. Remove humans from the process completely, until it's time to consume the product.
What about quality, you say? Well, I hadn't noticed much of that lately. This strike is all a squabble about division of sales and ad revenue. The networks have already said, "Well, if this goes on, we'll just go to reruns of the same crappy programs indefinitely, and when we get tired of that, there's two generations more of shitty archived TV to put on the air (we always wanted to see Hill Street Blues back on...)". Don't look for people finding other things to do with their time; most people will watch any old garbage. And I certainly wouldn't look for Little Mosque on the Prairie or (yech) Corner Gas to reach a significantly larger audience either - faint hope there!
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Date: 2007-11-15 08:05 am (UTC)I really hope they get what they are asking for; the studio heads make too much money!
As to quality, our roommates got us into watching Ugly Betty last year, and it is quite good and well-written, even if the fact that it is based on a telenovela makes it soapy. :P