Suffer the Symptoms of the Strike

Well, it’s begun; The Writer’s Guild of America has formed picket lines in Los Angeles and New York, after last minute negotiations failed to prevent the first writer’s strike in Hollywood in 19 years, but who’s counting, besides The Hollywood Reporter? No one watching television or going to the movies will be counting for a while. However, studios and the shows we all love and hold dear are already panicking and suffering the onset of a dry spell.

It’s been estimated that audiences won’t really notice any effect until about six to nine months from this beginning of the strike; that is, if the strike lasts. If Hollywood can come together and close this chasm quickly, then the gap could be nearly invisible, but if the strike persists and continues for a few weeks or months, then what might have been a tiny hiccup could turn into a flatline. Just as “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence, since the show, which is in its last season, may be forced to end after only 12 episodes as opposed to the planned 18:

“On a personal level, yeah, it would be nice to finish work on ‘Scrubs’ the way I wanted to,” Lawrence stated. “That it looks like it’s not happening is certainly disappointing, I can’t lie. But it's also not the end of the world.”

It might seem like the end of the world for a show just getting off the ground such as “Cane.” Picketers actually came around to cause a commotion outside the spot on the CBS lot where the new series is filming. The ruckus continued until production stopped, at which point the picketers returned to the picket line at the front of the studio, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Every series is in jeopardy and movies are just going to wind up on indefinite hold. But with television, the continuous production schedule and average nine months of seasonal run, fall through spring, makes it much harder on putting out the shows on a regular and fluid basis. The creators and actors and crew and others will suffer the effects worse than audiences, since their abilities to function will be impaired and their own jobs placed in jeopardy due to something many of them have no part or say in directly. All of these factors are reasons to hope the strike does not last very long.

While back up plans are in place at some studios, I hope they realize what a severe difference implementing secondary strategies can have on the quality and durability of a series. Writing is a significant chunk on the auditory half of the equation, because what audiences hear has to be as good as what they see for something to work; it doesn’t take a critic or an expert to know that either.