Measuring the Wrong Costs

A new study has determined that the 100-day writers strike cost Los Angeles $2.5 billion dollars. I was actually working the entire strike, so I didn't feel the impact. But there are so many moving parts on a film or television set - grips, gaffers, cameramen, focus pullers, craft services, drivers, construction, hair, makeup, etc. - that the number seems plausible to me.

What they ought to track is how much money will be lost to writers and industry workers AFTER the strike. Because the studios took the opportunity of the strike to hit the reset button on a lot of bad development deals they had. They took a fresh look at a bunch of shows and after determining that they had all kinds of leverage over them, put the hammer down:

LA Weekly's Nikki Finke reports that NBC has thanked Carson Daly for crossing the picket line to resume taping his late-night show during the writers' strike by slashing his budget and firing nine members of his staff, including three of his four writers. The network insists its decision has nothing to do with the strike. Finke says Daly became a scab because NBC threatened to cancel him unless he went back to work.

And Daly was one of the few who COOPERATED.

More important, the studios began to change the way they do business and cast aside the outdated model of previewing new shows in the fall, with NBC making the first move. What this means is that eventually there will be no pilot season. And that likely means a lot less pilots. We're already seeing the networks buy shows from other countries wholesale (instead of just reproducing them) and filling the schedule with a lot more reality and nonunion programming. This will probably spell the end of the upfronts, the annual event where networks preview the fall schedule to advertisers.

This had to happen sometime, the fall preview model was a relic. But the cost to writers is going to be significant. By neglecting to grow the union membership through gaining jurisdiction over everything on television, the Writer's Guild will see opportunities for their current members dry up. Despite this, the strike was successful because it showed that a labor union can still drive the agenda in Hollywood. But financially? I'm not sure it was a victory.