Cognition Dissemination: Remember What Happened During the Last Writers’ Strike?
The Writers Guild of America has gone on strike again, with union members now walking the picket line across the country. The WGA are asking for higher wages and royalties, a justifiable demand given the perpetually climbing amount of revenue entertainment companies and their rich executives are accruing. The writers are remarkably making less over time thanks to companies unsubtly desiring to make them all permalancers, companies that declined to even engage with them rationally regarding royalties for streaming shows. A deal is far from coming to fruition as of this writing, meaning this could be a long one. Well, another long one. Time will determine whether it will rival the 2007/2008 writers’ strike that lasted for 100 days, or even the 1988 strike that pressed on for a whopping 153.
In the chance that the strike indeed continues without companies refusing to pay living and worthwhile wages to the writers, the individuals chiefly responsible for their successful shows and films, it’s worth reexamining what happened the last time around to set expectations for entertainment watchers. It’s especially important info for anyone too young to remember how bad TV and, to a lesser extent, movie entertainment became for a bit of time, so gather around, kids who are assuredly reading this post.
Several projects in 2007/2008 suffered production interruptions, if they weren’t completely derailed. Shows like Fringe, Journeyman, Prison Break, and Battlestar Galactica were interrupted after writers went on strike in the middle of their seasons. Those seasons were unable to end their respective arcs in satisfactory ways when they resumed, thanks to writers both losing momentum and episode counts being reduced. There are plenty more examples in articles like this one and especially on the Wikipedia page. Perhaps the only show that ended up better off was Breaking Bad, thanks to a planned divisive twist that didn’t occur because of the reduced episode count.
I’ve seen Heroes cited as one of the premier examples of this phenomenon, but I don’t entirely agree with that. The show was already trekking down an undesirable path after its thoroughly underwhelming first season finale, and plans for the second season were derailed by NBC executives overruling the creatives regarding character development. But the strike certainly didn’t help.
Scripted TV shows were the most heavily impacted for the second half of 2008 and first half of 2009, but select movies were bruised too. Among them were Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Quantum of Solace, production for both of which continued without completed scripts or any script changes, respectively. The overarching stories in both movies were unfocused compared to their predecessors for this reason, thanks to either the directors and actors going through with incredibly long and flashy action sequences to compensate or by trying to do rewrites themselves. Whether House of the Dragon will venture through this remains to be seen, assuming there isn’t any scabby behavior.
The writers will hopefully get everything they’re asking for, because they’re the ones chiefly responsible for making these shows successful. But there are new obstacles they’ll have to wade through that didn’t exist during previous strikes, which studios will use to try and wait them out or pressure them into caving. In addition to TV and basic cable networks airing edited shows from premium channels and streaming networks (Dexter aired on CBS in a hilariously watered-down form), don’t be surprised if studios pivot to reality shows again. The quality of content presented during late 2008/early 2009 was dire; anyone who thought there was a dearth of good TV during the COVID-19 pandemic’s height is in for a rude awakening. But the quality threshold has never been high for trashy reality shows, and studios know it. Lots of people like having this stuff on in the background.
There might already be signs that networks are preparing for a long strike. Dancing with the Stars is moving back to ABC for new episodes, after being streamed exclusively on Disney Plus last season. Other streaming networks can rely on a crop of foreign entertainment, chief among them Netflix, which announced a $2.5 billion plan to further invest in Korean-produced content. Both announcements could be coincidences, but the timing is nonetheless interesting.
As much as it pains me to say it: Warner Bros. Discovery is the most well-equipped company to ride this out. WBD cancelled a bunch of scripted content after CEO David Zaslav took over, and shifted part of the overall company’s entertainment focus to unscripted content like the, uh, 90 Day Fiancé Cinematic Universe. Zaslav’s probably patting himself on the back so hard that he can’t even hear people like Adam Conover highlighting his massive salary in comparison to what fellow writers are asking for on the WBD-owned CNN. We’ll see if he goes too far in his plans and does something nonsensical like, say, reviving CN Real.
This new WGA strike will alone cause a significant-but-deserved disruption in the entertainment space, but this might only be the start. Contracts for the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and talent union SAG-AFTRA are set to expire on June 30th, with new contract negotiations for both with studios due to begin this month. Consider what would happen if they, too, were unable to get satisfactory results. The result would be a Hollywood Shutdown, an unprecedented summer for the entertainment industry. The writers, directors, and actors will ideally get what they’re asking for from studios worth billions posthaste.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
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The reason Heroes is cited as a big example of the damage a writer’s strike did to a show is because the entire second half of a storyline surrounding a virus had to be cut short. Even though catching and destroying the virus was pretty much the only heroic and intelligent thing Peter did that entire season, it meant that a hero who was introduced in order to deal with the virus at the intended end of the season no longer had anything to do and another character who got stranded in a bad timeline that the virus caused (and who was intended to be rescued in the second half of the season) was instead lost in time when the bad timeline was prevented, and instead of trying to figure out a way to get her back in future seasons, the writers ignored the fans who pointed out what happened. In a way, having the storyline cut short kind of makes me wish that the writers did that more often, making shorter storylines rather than keeping them going for the entire season and stretching them out to the point where you stop caring. Most of the characters were bland and uninteresting, and that was because they never had enough screen time to justify their existence. Ironically, looking back at the way the second season was cut short, I like what the writer’s strike did, as opposed to how the first season dragged.
Meanwhile… RIP Journeyman. You will be missed.
I still think about all the potential Heroes had, only for it to falter after the largely-good first season. But that’s a good point about shows that drag. A bunch of them that still air on TV still do it, but one way in which this strike will be a little different from the previous one is the sheer number of streaming shows with already-low episode counts. There are times when I miss 23-26 episode stuff, but it certainly doesn’t work for everything.
I think the biggest problem with Heroes is that it was trying to be like comic books but also like Lost and a large cast of characters which do their own thing and divides focus is definitely not a successful formula in the superhero genre. The reason Superman was a successful comic book, or Iron Man or Spider-Man is because they were focused on one hero, not fifteen heroes all doing their own thing in various parts of the world. The reason team comics get away with having multiple characters is because the team functions as one unit, not as fifteen heroes doing their own thing in various parts of the world.
And yet I think you could get away with telling stories about fifteen heroes doing their own thing in various parts of the world if you adopt more of a monster of the week scenario instead of what Heroes did, having one major problem being slowly worked on for an entire season while everyone had their own soap opera style drama they were working through. I think Peter and Hiro were the only ones who regularly contributed to the ongoing plot lines every week. Nearly every other character was extra. Claire was supposed to be this important character according to the first season, but her role was literally to become the damsel in distress that they were destined to save. They also had a habit of killing off characters when they stopped being useful to the plot instead of keeping them around in case they needed to use their powers again, which led to the creation of more characters with the same powers when they did need those powers again. There were exceptions, which made me wonder if they were going to bring those characters back sometime, but in the end, they didn’t. Like the invisible man played by the Ninth Doctor. Heroes was definitely a mess, and maybe I should write a Random Roar where I propose the writer’s strike was actually a good thing for the series and not the cause of its downfall.