Scriptwriters strike could see US TV lose the plot
[From Friday's Guardian]

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Thursday October 18, 2007

There is good news and bad news for American TV. The good news is that American viewers may soon get to see Ricky Gervais star in the original British incarnation of TV sitcom The Office. The bad news is that viewers are likely to be subject to a slew of new reality shows.

Those changes could be among the products of a possible strike by American screenwriters, the first in almost 20 years. Should the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers fail to reach agreement by the end of this month, writers could go on strike, stalling productions and leading networks and studios to delve into their archives.

The likely product for viewers is hours of unscripted reality TV, endless reruns, occasional airings of little-seen gems and a barrage of substandard fare at the box-office some time in 2009.

The prospect of a strike has so dismayed some Hollywood observers that they are calling this Halloween the scariest in two decades.

The dispute has even interrupted regular programming. On Tuesday night, the David Letterman show, one of network television's highest rated talkshows, featured the lead writer on the programme pleading with the audience to, "Tell the media companies to play fair with the writers."

The dispute stems from the arcane subject of residuals, or the amount a writer receives each time his or her work is repeated. The producer's position can be summed up in the words of studio boss Lew Wasserman, who famously noted that: "My plumber doesn't charge me every time I flush the toilet."

But for writers, residuals can offer a vital lifeline to sustain them through fallow periods. Marc Cherry, who toiled for years as an unacknowledged writer before creating Desperate Housewives in 2004, said that the residuals payments he received for work on The Golden Girls TV serial more than a decade earlier gave him the time and freedom to allow Desperate Housewives to gestate.

"These residuals allowed me to survive long enough to create a show that is a huge profit centre for the network," he told the Los Angeles Times. "That's what kept me afloat."

The studios initially proposed to introduce a new formula that would allow them to recoup some basic costs before paying out residuals to writers. The studios also want to recalculate the way in which residuals are paid for new media, arguing that the business models are too young for them to know if they are profitable.

The writers have rejected these proposals and are asking for higher payments for DVD and home video releases. They currently receive about 4 cents for every DVD sold. Last year, the West Coast writers guild collected some $264m in residual fees for its members.

The last writers strike, in 1988, lasted 22 weeks and cost the studios an estimated $500m. In 1960, future president Ronald Reagan, the head of the Screen Actors Guild, led a strike against the studios over the same issue.

This week, after three months of unproductive and antagonistic talks, the producers made a concession, removing the demand that residuals only be paid out after costs had been covered. This led to some optimism that a strike could be averted, although the two sides are yet to return to the negotiating table.

"There's no question there's a lot of anxiety, not just among writers but also among network and film executives," Los Angeles entertainment attorney Daniel Black told the Los Angeles Times. "Do you greenlight a movie? How long is the shooting going to be? Do we have to lay off employees? There are a lot of moving pieces here."

The major studios have reportedly put a freeze on overtime and stopped new contracts for writers, even as they rush to complete projects already in production. For the writers, once a strike is underway, they will not be allowed to work on or deliver scripts. If they do, they will be in violation of the Guild's strike regulations.

The prospect of a strike has at least produced one boom industry: newspaper articles by writers contemplating what they will do when they are not allowed to write. In the words of former Cheers writer and novelist Rob Long, in an op-ed article published in the Los Angeles Times under the headline To noodle or not to noodle, "As a professional writer, I've always been pretty good at not writing." A writers' strike holds out the prospect, he concludes, of "business as usual."