Strike Pay
The Writers Guild of America last went on strike in 1988 for a full 22 weeks and supposedly cost the TV and movie industries an estimated $500 million. The movie studios were hurt least, having enough completed scripts to withstand the siege. TV drama production took more of a hit, with shows delayed and pilots cancelled. (And, in the long term, seeds were planted for prime-time game and reality shows that made the networks less vulnerable to demanding talent.) The worst beating was suffered by talk show hosts like Johnny Carson and David Letterman, who stumbled through with producers and scabs creating the gags.
The current WGA strike is liable to have similar effects, except the Teamsters have so far pledged to honor WGA picket lines, which might actually halt TV and movie production altogether. Most important, though, is this strike is happening in a very different industrial context: Cable existed in 1988, but it developed very few of its own shows. It also wasn
Published: 11/08/2007
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