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Post by ThirdMan on Apr 19, 2023 11:33:56 GMT -8
Eh, it's not the end of the world. A break from new material just gives folks like me more time to catch up on all the stuff they've missed, from the past few years, and well prior to that. Hollywood will return to action once its bottom line (in film and TV ) takes a sizable-enough financial hit, and they just can't takes it anymore.
(Also, I'm probably gonna be playing the Zelda sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, for the month of May and well beyond that. I'll survive.)
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 21, 2023 14:42:27 GMT -8
Hollywood will survive a strike like it has before, but probably not without Los Angeles taking a serious economic hit. (And they don't have Ah-nold around this time to help terminate the dispute.) I think the WGA has genuine reason to complain here - streaming services have become a dominant force and completely changed the way TV is produced and consumed, and they've been screwing writers out of residuals for years. But hopefully this thing is resolved fairly quaintly. If it isn't, you can expect the shows to start falling like dominoes - first the live-ish productions ( SNL would cease production without even finishing the season), then the scripted shows would probably start to be impacted around September. But reality shows would remain unaffected, so I look forward to the six Love is Blind spinoffs our society may about to be pummeled with. |
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Post by guttersnipe on Apr 26, 2023 14:30:40 GMT -8
AI scriptbots be like "We'll take it from here".
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Post by Jeremy on Apr 30, 2023 10:09:31 GMT -8
AI scriptbots be like "We'll take it from here". Believe it or not, there's already talk about this. Probably still a few years away from becoming a serious issue, but a number of the most popular shows on broadcast are so relentlessly formulaic that it wouldn't be much of a stretch for a chatbot to take over scriptwriting duties. |
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Post by Jeremy on May 2, 2023 5:04:55 GMT -8
It's official.Apart from live shows like late-night programming and the aforementioned SNL, not a lot will be immediately impacted. I expect the effects will take longer to show up overall than in 2007, since many of the most buzzy shows are on cable/streaming and are thus usually written months in advance. But no new TV or film scripts will be written in Hollywood from this day until... whenever they work out an agreement. I can't help thinking back to the '07 strike this week, and the unusual parallel - that strike was in part provoked by disagreement over DVD sales. And this new strike comes about just as news breaks that Netflix is sunsetting its DVD-by-mail program, with physical media looking to be increasingly obsolete.
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Post by otherscott on May 2, 2023 11:06:59 GMT -8
I think part of the reasoning for why a strike was likely here is that cable and streaming has already proven that they can withstand a dearth of new content for a while by trickling out their completed shows. There was a little bit of a slowdown of new things in late 2020 and early 2021, but it wasn't a complete standstill.
So surviving a month or two of a writer's strike? As TV viewers we will notice nothing. 6 months of a writer's strike would be a different story.
As Jeremy notes, back in 2017 the TV landscape was a lot different and there were incredibly short turnarounds between writing and airing, and also because of that the networks had very little backlog. Also, things aren't still being written on the fly anymore on cable and streaming, nothing sees the air until it is completed for the most part (with the exception of some occasional post-production)
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Post by Jeremy on May 2, 2023 17:50:46 GMT -8
The irony about a writers' strike driven (in part) by the dominance of streaming services is that the streaming services will probably be the ones least impacted by the strike, since they have a massive backlog of TV that viewers can watch at any time, and because they tend to produce their shows several months in advance.
Meanwhile, the broadcast networks may start to feel the heat more quickly, since they have a lot of time to fill and they need programming to fill it. During the fall 2020 TV season, networks aired edited versions of streaming shows like Star Trek: Discovery and LA's Finest (plus international shows like Canada's Transplant) to fill up the hours left empty by Covid, and if this strike goes on for a while, I expect they'll take a similar tack.
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Post by otherscott on May 2, 2023 20:06:17 GMT -8
Just to get a feeling of how far ahead streaming/ cable is on content, it's been announced that the scripts of Season 2 of House of the Dragon are already completed. And even before the writers strike, I'd have been shocked if that aired in 2023.
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Post by Jeremy on May 3, 2023 17:37:57 GMT -8
For historical context, this is the seventh strike in WGA history. The other six strikes typically lasted between three to five months (except for the 1981 strike over - wouldja believe - VHS tapes, which lasted only two weeks). Tough to predict the future, but given all the complexities of our streaming-heavy era, I'd be very surprised if this thing shakes out before July.
If the strike does drag on for several months, expect shows to be impacted not only in production time but in production itself. For example, Andor may have (just) completed the scriptwriting process for Season Two, but it's only just started filming, and it will likely be hamstrung by an inability to alter or rewrite scenes even if the production necessitates it.
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Post by guttersnipe on May 7, 2023 0:55:48 GMT -8
Believe it or not, there's already talk about this. Probably still a few years away from becoming a serious issue, but a number of the most popular shows on broadcast are so relentlessly formulaic that it wouldn't be much of a stretch for a chatbot to take over scriptwriting duties. Before long it'll come out that this has been going on for years. When did 2 Broke Girls start? |
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Post by Jeremy on May 7, 2023 18:18:55 GMT -8
I submit that this video is more entertaining than a lot of shows written by actual humans. |
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 12, 2023 18:21:04 GMT -8
With the writers' strike now deep into its third month, and many shows having either slowed or shuttered production, things might seem kind of rough in Hollywood. But! The writers may be getting some company soon. Because it's possible that the actors may be going on strike as well! It's been a long while since there's been an actors' strike - the last one pertaining to TV and movies was in 1980 (although there was a strike in 2000 relating to commercials and advertising). I imagine this will get a lot more attention than the writers' strike, should it come to pass. Exciting times ahead. I expect the Succession Awards will be fun to watch in September, what with no one writing jokes and no one performing skits onstage. |
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 13, 2023 18:56:58 GMT -8
Update: For the first time in 43 years, Hollywood actors are officially on strike. From SAG President Fran Drescher's statement today (feel free to read it in her Nanny voice): Folks, this is a good time to start catching up on all those old TV shows and movies that have been gathering dust on your watchlist. New content is gonna dry up pretty soon, and perhaps for quite a while. |
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jul 20, 2023 11:58:16 GMT -8
One thing that's going to be odd is watching corporate-owned media attempt to ignore or obfuscate the obvious labor issues here - no "Disney is the parent company of ABC" disclaimer on this TOTALLY NEUTRAL bit of TV news reportage, for instance, but I suspect that as the strike drags on there's going to be some very weird attempts to fill the void on legacy network schedules. They don't have the luxury of importing subtitled Squid Game-type hits from overseas (although they could try Canadian content - what was that medical drama about the Arab refugee doctor who moves to America or whatever? I saw like twelve ads for it, the name was, um, Transplanted or something? Was that a hit? Probably not. The CW has tried and failed to do this a million times, even with genuinely popular shows like Taskmaster)
But the strangest bit of reportage I've seen about the strike is this article about nostalgia for... Bones? Which apparently had the most happy writer's room and production crew on TV, for a show that I was surprised to see there's so much love for - like, OK, maybe it's not as weird as reading an article about Major Crimes in 2023, but still. I am holding out for hope that with articles like this and the success of stuff like Abbott Elementary, we're going to start seeing people recognize there is something of merit to television shows that have 22 episode seasons and breathing room for arcs - if not necessarily artistically (LOL SVU) then at least in terms of the labor side of things. Exciting times ahead. I expect the Succession Awards will be fun to watch in September, what with no one writing jokes and no one performing skits onstage. I'm sure Succession fans are used to television programs that have no jokes in them. (Damnit, why couldn't the strike have happened during the year Ted Lasso swept??)
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 21, 2023 15:03:50 GMT -8
Honestly, on closer look, I would be very surprised if the Emmys air in September. Already there's talk of postponing, since either strike is unlikely to be resolved before September. One thing that's going to be odd is watching corporate-owned media attempt to ignore or obfuscate the obvious labor issues here - no "Disney is the parent company of ABC" disclaimer on this TOTALLY NEUTRAL bit of TV news reportage, for instance, but I suspect that as the strike drags on there's going to be some very weird attempts to fill the void on legacy network schedules. They don't have the luxury of importing subtitled Squid Game-type hits from overseas (although they could try Canadian content - what was that medical drama about the Arab refugee doctor who moves to America or whatever? I saw like twelve ads for it, the name was, um, Transplanted or something? Was that a hit? Probably not. The CW has tried and failed to do this a million times, even with genuinely popular shows like Taskmaster) Laugh if you will, but NBC has a leg up with Transplant (no past suffix) - they acquired that show for the fall 2020 season when everything was postponed due to Covid, and presumably the next season (which has already aired in Canada, a country with no TV strikes that I know of) will likely air later in America this year. But I doubt they'll go for anything that requires subtitles. Thankfully, they don't need to! In fall 2020, the networks acquired streaming shows that debuted exclusively online years earlier ( Star Trek: Discovery, Swamp Thing, the Gilmore Girls sequel) to fill out the schedule between the reruns and reality shows. I suspect we'll get something similar in fall 2023 - already CBS has announced they'll be airing the first season of Yellowstone this fall. (Hey, it's only the most popular show on TV.) |
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