Optimism and Pessimism in the Writer's Strike

Though there's been a news blackout from the bargaining table, many in the entertainment community are cheered by Nikki Finke's report that a deal is imminent in the 4 week-old writer's strike. Her source makes sense, saying that the agents have brokered this; they have a stake in both writer profits and studio profits, not to mention getting production back in gear again.

However, in the wake of this impending deal we should not forget about the forgotten writer's strike of 2006. I've been saying from the beginning that the strategy of the WGA, to get as much as they can for current members instead of growing the membership, is fatally flawed, and will result in a constriction of revenue for writers as less and less spots on the TV schedule will require them. Daniel Blau came forward last week with the inside story:

In the early summer of 2006, only one of the "Top Model" writers was involved in the union campaign. The rest of us were, at best, tangentially aware of its existence. Until, that is, the afternoon of June 21. That was the date of our first official meeting with WGA organizers. Over lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Santa Monica, they spelled out the manifold benefits of guild representation: health insurance, pension contributions and credits for our work. The industry was ready for reality story editors to enter the WGA, they said. Les Moonves -- head of CBS, which owned the new CW network -- had been "put on notice." There was no talk of losing our jobs. We believed the guild's ambiguous promise, "you'll come out of this better than you went in."

Why only "Top Model?" one co-worker asked. Why not all reality shows? "'Big Brother' is ready to go out," they told us. "So is 'The Amazing Race.' But you need to start the ball rolling." We would be the vanguard. Our fellow reality scribes would take to the street inspired by our courage, they said. They bought us lunch [...]

The next morning, July 20, in front of our production offices in West Los Angeles, I read our statement to about 100 supporters and the news crews, officially launching our strike. We hoisted our WGA strike signs and never entered those offices again. In the weeks to come, our supporters would dwindle, then disappear.

The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished. The guild had vanished from our cause, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents the video editors, swooped in to unionize the show, freezing the WGA out of "Top Model" for good.

The lack of organizing for nonfiction and reality shows has given the studios a powerful fallback position which represents 25% of this season's network schedule, and will only grow if writer benefits expand in a new contract. This strike is noble, and from a public relations standpoint, the WGA has hit a home run. The organizing strategy is simply flawed, and I'm not sanguine about the prospects for the future.

On Oct. 23 of this year, with talks stalled between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Variety published an article summed up by this headline: "WGA gives up on nonscripted effort." Organizing reality TV writers was one of the contract demands that the WGA was willing to toss aside to reach a deal before the Nov. 1 strike deadline, the article reported.

The next day, an e-mail with the expected rebuttal arrived from the WGA president. The guild's reality TV efforts were as strong as ever, he said. But as far as I could tell, the only error in the Variety article was that it hadn't been published a year earlier.

So let's hope there's a resolution in the offing, but one that recognizes that any show with a script - and every show I've ever worked on has one, be it fiction, nonfiction, reality, game show, whatever - deserves benefits for whoever created it.