Screwing Over Your Colleagues - Tuesdays At 9

As someone who works on shows in this genre, I am thoroughly disgusted by this one:

"You're fired" -- but for real.

Fox has ordered a one-hour unscripted series that turns real-life company layoffs into a reality contest.

The show's working title is "Someone's Gotta Go." Employees are called to a meeting and informed there will be layoffs, but with a reality show twist: The staff will be allowed to determine who is fired.

The employees will have access to the company's internal information -- budgets, HR files, salaries, etc. -- to help make their decision.

It's the anti-"Apprentice": Instead of contestants vying for a dream job, they're fighting to keep the lousy one they already have.

Each episode will focus on one small company (less than 20 employees). The host is a business expert, not yet named, who also serves as a consultant to the companies featured on the show. There's no word yet when "Someone's" will air.

I hope never.

Far from voting someone "off the island," in this case you're pitting people against one another in a life-changing event, with severe consequences for the individual. This is the stuff of a GAME?

Maybe if the company in question was the entertainment division middle management at Fox and the production company that dreamed this up, I could go along with it. Because that's who deserves such humiliation.

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.

Forward Thinking Needed

Looks like the writer's strike is about to come to an end. The membership is pretty likely to go along with the result of the negotiations. From my perspective, which is admittedly limited, the union sold out people like me who are storytellers on nonunion shows, thousands of us who signed cards asking them to negotiate on our behalf, and followed a strategy of getting as much as possible for current membership instead of growing the union. As a result, expect lots more American Gladiator spinoffs and the like and less opportunities for WGA members in the broadcast format, although with the impending unlimited-channel universe of the Internet maybe there are some additional possibilities.

In general I laud what the writers were able to do, but the strategy may come crashing back on them in the long run.

WGA Forgets Their Allies, Sows The Seeds Of Their Own Disaster

The WGA just ensured more American Idols far into the future.

WGA demands for reality TV and animation jurisdiction are officially off the table.

The WGA said so Tuesday in confirming its informal talks with studio chiefs, aimed at getting stalled contract negotiations back on track. Scribes may or may not end up accepting contract terms similar to the DGA's, but the move follows the directors' lead by first meeting informally with studio executives under the cover of a press blackout [...]

"In order to make absolutely clear our commitment to bringing a speedy conclusion to negotiations, we have decided to withdraw our proposals on reality and animation," the guild said. "Our organizing efforts to achieve guild representation in these genres for writers will continue. You will hear more about this in the next two weeks."

I saw this one coming a mile away.

I'm someone who would have benefited from expanding jurisdiction, someone who signed a card to have the WGA fight for jurisdiction, someone who's attended rallies and supported individual strikes in favor of jurisdiction. Once again the WGA is following the old-union model of getting whatever they can for their old membership instead of growing the membership. Prepare for plenty more reality shows, more than are on the air now, and a shrinking of the union writing jobs on television. And in a few years we'll all be back here again. The studios now have no incentive to put scripted, Guild-protected shows on the air. That's great.

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.

I Support The Strike, Not The Strategy

The Writers Guild of America took to the streets today, beginning what promises to be a long strike. I couldn't be more in support of the people who are the lifeblood of Hollywood, the creative personnel that are the engine of the last vibrant manufacturing industry in America. Unfortunately, I'm getting the sense that their leadership is falling back on an old union strategy of securing benefits for their existing membership rather than allowing their membership to grow, and this will have disastrous consequences for the future of the labor movement.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a post, It's the Unions, Stupid, which documented my experience at a Writers Guild meeting dedicated to organizing reality and nonfiction television storytellers.

Yes, a lot of reality television is slipshod, exploitative and dumbed-down. But people don't understand that the rank-and-file who work in it are often being as exploited as the contestants. Reality is big because of its low costs, mainly because, unlike scripted shows, it is not unionized. This has become a bargaining chip for the networks in their dealings with the Writer's Guild, Director's Guild, and others: take our crappy contract, or we'll just make more reality shows.

Reality show workers make less than their counterparts in scripted TV. They work largely on weekly salaries, usually for no overtime, yet during stressful parts of production 16-hour days and weekend work are all too typical. Their credits are so amorphous that they bear no relation to the actual job worked. If a reality show is sold to another network for use in reruns, none of the workers see any residual fees. They have no employer-paid health care or pensions, and as freelancers on short-term assignments, they have little or no job security. 1 out of every 3 TV and film industry professionals are out of work on any given day in Hollywood (just go to a coffee shop at 2:30 on a Wednesday for proof).

This probably sounds whiny to many, and actually, it should. Most of these people are well-paid for the work that they do. Of course, that's mainly because of the power of collective bargaining. The sundry labor unions have forced Hollywood to share its profits with its employees, with very few exceptions. But while reality television workers do benefit from that to a degree, they are the crack in the dike that allows the networks to cash in.

Along with hundreds of others, I signed a card at that time, in May 2005, allowing the WGA to negotiate on my behalf. These negotiations ran up against a brick wall. There were a couple high-profile meetings and protests. Nothing. There were lawsuits against production companies who were making their employees work 18-hour days, falsifying time cards, changing start dates and delaying productions that cost the employees thousands of dollars. They resulted in brief reconciliations that were eventually rolled back. There was a high-profile strike last year by the writer-producers of America's Next Top Model. The editors, who were unionized through IATSE, didn't honor the picket line, the season of shows were finished, and those writers were not brought back the following season. There was talk of a "wage-and-hour" campaign, to sue the production companies for overtime pay. It never materialized.

The light at the end of the tunnel was the coming negotiations on a new contract. Many thought that organizing reality and nonfiction storytellers would be a key bargaining chip. After all, in the event of a strike, the studios could simply ramp their nonunion shows into production and move forward with business as usual. So to avert the same thing happening far into the future, it made sense for the WGA to take a stand now, expand their membership, and leave the studios with less wiggle room to make a schedule during subsequent threats to walk out. Indeed, this is exactly what the studios are saying is their alternative now.

Prime-time schedules would appear relatively unchanged for a couple of months, since a handful of episodes have already been prepared. But if the strike drags on the 2008 schedule will be heavy on reality shows (not covered by the current contracts) and reruns [...]

Though CW Entertainment Chief Dawn Ostroff says they're prepared, with new reality series like Farmer Wants a Wife and Crowned waiting in the wings, she, too, sees no advantage to striking: "It's just better for everyone if habits aren't broken and if people that are getting into characters and shows are able to continue to do so."

I'm not at the bargaining table, so I can only go by the many reports I've seen, but it appears to me that the WGA is holding the line on DVD and Internet residuals. Now, those are important issues that must be part of an overall agreement. But the difference between those benefits discussions and expanding membership to other programming mirrors the central debate within the labor community; should they get as much for the dwindling numbers of union members they have, or should the focus be on expanding membership? This is the schism that caused the SEIU and other unions to leave the AFL-CIO and form the Change To Win coalition. Andy Stern and the other new-labor leaders firmly believe that the old paradigm is failing America, where union membership has declined to a great degree over the past 50 years. If you give management a lifeline, a way to get their work done without having to deal with a union, they're going to take it. There are significantly less situation comedies in production than there were ten years ago. There are less dramas, too, at least at the network level.

I hear the criticism that reality shows are cheap and tawdry and a major factor in the decline of Western civilization. To a large extent I agree with it. But if you hate reality shows, the number one thing you should hope for is that they become organized. Ratings are only a small part of the story of reality's success; with the exception of American Idol, that growth has leveled off. It's the enormous difference in production costs that has led to the burgeoning of the genre, and that's entirely attributable to the fact that they're nonunion. The chain of TV and entertainment can only be as strong as its weakest link. And I believe that, by foregrounding the monetary issues and not fighting to expand the membership, the WGA is undergoing the wrong strategy for the future, one that will ensure that their members have less opportunities to practice their craft.

United Hollywood is giving constant updates, as well as the LA Times' Hollywood Writers blog. I will support the strike in any way possible. But I wish that the leadership would understand the need for a new-labor strategy, to increase the fortunes of the middle class and ensure that nobody is left behind.

Fooled Me

The "Who Wants a Donated Kidney?" reality show, it turns out, is a hoax. I think the real story here is how the standards of television have sunk so low that this kind of show was completely plausible.

Reality Outpaces Satire, Ex. CXXXVIII

I distinctly remember, back when I was doing comedy more, that somebody had a joke (maybe me) abut a new reality show called "Who Wants My Kidney?"

Yeah, that's totally happening now in the Netherlands.

I thik the M.O. for anyone who wants to sell a show these days is to think of something so outlandish that there's no way any studio exec could possibly accept it. And then, watch them accept it.

This is approximately how we ended up with Shear Genius.