For the past week, you may have noticed that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been in reruns. Same with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Ditto Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Soon, you're going to see only repeats of your favorite sitcoms and dramas. It could stay that way for a long, long time, and some of you may have no idea why.
When The Diamondback ran an article about South Campus Commons and Dorchester Hall losing cable last week ("Cable TV outage hits Commons," Nov. 9), I think it missed an important opportunity to tie that campus incident to a major national story, a story that, to my surprise, no one in College Park seems to be talking about: the Writers Guild of America strike.
Effective Monday, Nov. 5, the WGA (the union of film and television writers) went on strike in the midst of a heated battle against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over profits from DVD and new media sales, among other issues.
The strike does not just affect those living in New York City or Los Angeles; it is an issue that has severe short- and long-term consequences, especially for those students looking to go into writing, producing, directing, acting or anything to do with film and television that will depend on the outcome of this strike.
The WGA strike is very complex, and I encourage students to look it up on Google, go to the WGA website at www.WGA.org or view a host of funny but informative YouTube videos about the subject. The issue boils down to this: When you buy Family Guy DVDs, download an episode of Lost on iTunes or catch up on Grey's Anatomy at ABC.com, the creators behind that content (writers, directors, producers, actors) see little to zero profits.
The studios are not budging, and, as a result, the writers will not turn in another script until the issue is resolved.
Obviously, this has massive consequences for current and aspiring television and film writers, but what does this mean for the rest of us casual viewers? Starting in early December, and possibly before that, new episodes of television shows will cease to exist. The networks will run out of scripts, and everything will go into reruns.
Of course, at the same time, I feel for the writers, as well as the directors, producers and actors who are supporting their co-workers and refusing to cross the picket lines themselves. Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam on NBC's The Office, wrote a great MySpace blog entry explaining the strike, and talking about how when actors aren't working regularly, they depend on receiving extra money when their shows are in reruns.
"In 10 years I may need those residual checks to cover my electric bill," Fischer writes. "If in 10 years, everything is a rerun on the internet, the current union contracts say the studios don't have to pay us a dime. And, I'll be sitting in the dark."
It is not only the prominent showrunners who are suffering. Right now, hundreds of crew members (makeup artists, medics, assistants) are being laid off as directors and actors of shows are sticking by their writers and shutting down production until the strike is settled. In reading more about the issue, however, the majority say they are doing it for future television and film writers.
I don't know if it was a coincidence that Commons television stopped working the day after the WGA strike was announced, but I do know that come January, if the strike continues, I'll likely prefer static to the reality shows and reruns that the networks will be forced to broadcast.
Emily Yahr is a senior journalism major and a former Diamondback reporter. She can be reached at emily.yahr@gmail.com.
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