What happens when your imported product dries up, and your domestic product has effectively died on the vine?

Media people in the US have been discussing for a few weeks some of the possible negative effects that a WGA strike might have on American television production, and the knock-on effects for broadcasting in the US.

What I'm wondering is what happens to telly in this country... seeing as how the private OTA networks have already abdicated their weekday content and scheduling to the Americans (and collect a pretty penny from Canadian corporate advertisers via simultaneous substitution* ), what happens when that content is no longer there as promised?

Do you, as CTV or Global, simply suck it up from NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox et al and show whatever is replacing your original content? What if another Canadian network has already pledged it? (Crap. I can't find that article I saw online discussing this possibility.)

OK. There are bound to be insurance provisions in the private broadcasters' contracts with the advertisers and agencies to cover this eventuality. But still. You're CTV and Global. You have one major domestic product each, both of them half-hour sitcoms. A drama you were sharing with ABC Family has been put down (Falcon Beach), another one (Whistler) appears to be in limbo, and nothing seems to be in the pipeline.

What do you do?

Do you start raiding your other properties? In this case, cable specialty channels? NBC is currently rumoured to be considering exactly this for Battlestar Galactica, perhaps taking old episodes from the SciFi channel and showing them over the main network. Which may work. However, when they showed the miniseries a few years ago, ratings for the network tanked pretty badly (Unfortunately, as it is my favourite show).

For CTVglobemedia this is now a moot point as they now own all the parts of the puzzle - CityTV shows S2 reruns from Space currently; conceivably they could do the same with the main network ... but what does Global do with replacing Bionic Woman, or Journeyman, or Life?

Do the US networks reimburse Canadian networks at any point?


* I am highly amused to discover that US cable providers do the same to Canadian content shown down south as well: see the article on syndication exclusivity, also via Wikipedia. For more information on the US side of things, see Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood.

From Deadline Hollywood:
Strike Vote In For WGA: 90.3% Say "Yes"
UPDATE: Hollywood writers tonight gave their guild leaders an overwhelming authorization to strike. A walkout could come as soon as November 1st, but I hear that's unlikely as long as progress is being made during the ongoing negotiations with studios and networks. The Writer's Guild Of America announced tonight that the 5,507 ballots cast among its 12,0000 members was the highest turnout in its history -- and underscores the passion and solidarity of the writers to win concessions from the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers. "It shows an overwhelmingly engaged and activated community of writers who care about this negotiation and support our goals," said WGA West president Patric Verrone, himself an animation writer, in a statement tonight. "Writers do not want to strike, but they are resolute and prepared to take strong, united action to defend our interests. What we must have is a contract that gives us the ability to keep up with the financial success of this ever-expanding industry."

Earlier this evening, I reported that the WGA East authorized the strike by a blowout 90% even though the WGA East was expected to be more anti-strike than the way larger WGA West. "This historic vote sends an unequivocal message to the AMPTP, loud and clear," said WGA east president Michael Winship. "We will not be taken advantage of and we will not be fooled."

Tonight's total WGA tally blew away the producers. Judging from the phone calls I've received from several of the Hollywood moguls, the vote had its intended effect.

As I reported last night, the strike authorization "Yes" vote has OKed a walkout that will bring Hollywood to its knees when it happens. All that was left to be determined was the percentages by which the 12,000-strong Writer's Guild of America members wanted the labor action. These numbers were important to both the WGA and to the studios and networks in order to gauge the strength of the strike fervor. The feeling was always that if the total of the "Yes" votes was anywhere above 75%, the studios and networks had a giant headache on their hands.

I say the moguls shouldn't make the mistake of consoling themselves that most of the writers' ballots were mailed in before AMPTP took that residuals rollback off the bargaining table. Because it wouldn't have mattered: the percentages would have been the same. But that was a huge concession, despite the WGA negotiators spin on it last night, and for the first time it sparked a mood of optimism among the writers that a strike could be averted. Yes, the WGA contract will expire Oct. 31 without a new one in place, but that date is meaningless because the WGA negotiators are not expected to call a strike until weeks after -- in fact, right before New Year's when the timing will be most strategic and the moguls' vacations ruined.

The good news is the WGA and AMPTP are returning to the bargaining table on Monday for a face to face session, which has been rare during these negotiations going on since mid-July. The bad news is if the producers don't understand the degree to which this is a very determined and unified guild in no mood to be pushed around on the dozens of other rollbacks remaining besides residuals. The writers' negotiating team is determined to bring members a very real downloading income stream. Sure, right now no one knows what those revenues will be, but the guild won't move past the difficult New Media issue when the current WGA rallying cry is "Remember the DVDs!"

This WGA team isn't gonna fold like the previous crew led by John Wells because this time around the writers are really in charge, not the hyphenates. (I still marvel at the way Wells ran for WGA president in 1999 and won even though he was a preeminent TV producer, split the Writer's Guild into haves and have nots, then failed in 2001 to stand firm on any of the hard issues so as to ensure no strike would interrupt his own productions. As if that weren't chutzpah enough, shortly after the WGA contract was resolved, Wells quietly informed his West Wing writers that the provisions in their own contracts for increased pay and promotions would not be honored in the series' upcoming 3rd season. And the timing of his move made it almost impossible for them to find new jobs.)

Again, I'll reiterate that this strike can be averted only if the studios and networks decide to. There's no question that the WGA top management and negotiating committee -- Patric Verrone, Dave Young, John Bowman -- outsmarted the moguls who thought there wouldn't be a separate WGA labor action until June when SAG's contract came due. The producers planned primarily for that timing, not for now. So studios found themselves suddenly scrambling to lock down projects and productions they thought had several more months of unfettered development before a walkout. But the networks were really besides themselves at the WGA's earlier-than-anticipated deadline: with so many deals and devlopment done between the start of pilot season in January and the upfronts in May, a WGA walkout by January 1st means network TV is toast. And, at a time when it can least afford it. (Realistically, how many consumers even differentiate anymore between broadscasters and cable? It's all just programming.). And that's not even taking into account how this fall's new shows are underwhelming if not downright tanking.

So far, the WGA has been wily. But they need to stop short of willfull as well, especially with Friday's Dow Jones ending 360 points down, the current credit crunch, and the spectre of further infotainment consolidation (like General Electric selling NBC Universal to Time Warner). As for the AMPTP, this is no time for arrogance. The moguls need to provide an additional income stream that the guild can sell to its members as a major victory. Of course, New Media can still be tweaked and studied well into the future, but even a trickle of new cash flow can transform the WGA's attitude that it's losing too much financial ground to Big Media.

Do it, and do it now.

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."