The Stage

Hollywood writers announce strike

Published Monday 5 November 2007 at 11:45 by Judd Hollander

Screenwriters in Hollywood have gone on strike after the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, West and the Council of the Writers Guild of America, East unanimously called for industrial action.

The current WGA contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expired on October 31. The two WGA organisations represent approximately 12,000 writers.

The chief stumbling block in the negotiations with AMPTP has been over the writers’ share of profits from the DVD market, as well as in the relatively new medium of internet usage. Producers want to keep the current format in place for the former, especially since the DVD market is seen to have reached its peak, and want more time to study the aspects of the latter, saying it is too soon to really know how the internet is going to affect the industry financially.

Both sides seemed destined for a strike over the DVD issue three years ago, but the producers headed off any labour dispute at that time by contributing enough money to keep the WGA health and pension funds solvent for the life of the new contract. A process they also used to head off strikes by the Director Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild.

This time however, when it became apparent negations were going nowhere, the WGA set a strike date for Monday.

Michael Winship, WGAW president commented: “This is not a decision we take lightly. In fact, we make it with great sadness. There is still time and a deal to be made before this strike begins. We urge the studios and networks to come back and bargain fairly.”

Not surprisingly, the AMPTP countered with their own press release, with their president, Nick Counter, saying: “Instead of working toward solutions that would give the industry the flexibility it needs to meet today’s business challenges, the WGA leadership continues to pursue numerous unreasonable proposals that would result in astronomical and unjustified increases in our costs, further restrict our ability to produce, promote and market TV series and films, and prohibit us from experimenting with programming and business models in New Media.”

Originally there was the thought that the WGA would continue to work without a contract until June 2008, at which time the AMPTP deals with SAG and the DGA would also expire, but the WGA decided to go it alone - at least for now.

In anticipation of such a strike, film producers have been stockpiling scripts and rushing as many films into production as possible. As much of the 2008 films are already in the can, or past the script writing stage, the studios won’t really feel any loss of product till 2009. And that’s assuming the strike lasts very long.

Television programmes, however, have a different problem. With usually 22 to 24 episodes to shoot per series, there is often no time to have scripts written far in advance. At this point most shows have material to take them through to February but may not have enough to get them to the end of the season.

If the strike goes on for a long time, viewers should expect to see an increase in reality shows.

Affected most of all will be the various daytime dramas and late night talk shows which air an hour of original programming five days a week. Several of the late night shows have already announced that they will begin airing repeats starting on Monday. Meanwhile, daytime dramas will probably be written by producers and managerial staff, at least for a while.

Right now, the pressure is on the AMPTP to end the strike as quickly as possible, for any deal the writers make will set the framework for solutions with the directors and actors unions.