TV Braces for a Writers’ Strike
Job Action Could Boost Cable Nets, Internet Video
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 11/4/2007 7:00:00 PM
Nineteen years ago, during the last writers’ strike, Johnny Carson was king of late-night TV. There were a limited number of cable networks, reality programming was obscure and there was no World Wide Web or YouTube.
But the planned strike by the Writers Guild of America — which, at press time, was expected to start as early as today (Nov. 5) — will affect a media landscape that’s been totally transformed.
In 2007, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert get the buzz in late-night TV. There’s a cornucopia of cable channels. American Idol and Dancing With the Stars are monster reality hits for broadcast. And the Internet has created infinite, on-demand content choices for consumers.
In fact, the WGA is battling with producers over digital issues that didn’t even exist in 1988: compensation for content that migrates to new-media platforms, from the Internet to iPods to cellphones, as well as DVD residuals.
“The difference between 1988 and now — and it is a pretty major difference — is that first of all, TV was a completely different medium in terms of the number of cable channels, the number of channels people received, satellite, DVR-ing, everything,” said BBC Worldwide America president Garth Ancier, who was president of programming for the Fox network during the last strike.
So a WGA strike this go-around will have far different consequences than the five-month-old job action the scribes took nearly two decades ago against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
If a strike is prolonged, and broadcasters run out of new episodes of scripted shows, they will have to air reruns or replacement content, like reality shows, as they typically do during the summer. That could turn off viewers, who may then channel-surf and switch to cable — boosting the medium’s ratings, as happens in the summer.
In 1988, even without much cable competition, broadcast slipped slightly in viewership after the strike. That could be exacerbated today.
“We’re in a much more fragmented environment, and when you combine that with diminished time-shifting [as a direct consequence of the strike], there will be a far greater ratings impact this time around,” said Carat USA director of programming Shari Anne Brill.
| THEN AND NOW: TV Writers Strike |
|---|
| The last time TV script writers went on strike, there were no digital media to contend with. Here’s how the story played out then and could now: |
| SOURCES: Carat’s Broadcast and Video Beat Writers Strike Fact Sheet, Multichannel News research, Media Economics: Theory and Practice, Alison Alexander, 1988 Radio Shack catalog found at maj.com |
| 1988: The Landscape |
| Competition: Broadcast networks ruled primetime, although viewership was split. |
| Cable Networks: Roughly 100 networks existed specifically for cable. Nielsen monitored about 20. |
| Internet: No video was carried to consumers. |
| New Media: A Radio Shack “transportable” phone costs $1,199. One without a big charger pack is $1,499. A two-minute call from New York to Stamford costs a buck. |
| The Response |
| Reality: Broadcasters brought out newsmagazines and reality shows, such as 48 Hours and America’s Most Wanted. |
| No Scripts: David Letterman and Johnny Carson winged it on their late-night shows. |
| Reruns: Fox ran episodes of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show that first appeared on Showtime. |
| 2007: The Landscape |
| Competition: The typical cable or satellite system offers 300 channels of programming. The Internet offers infinite channels. TV shows and movies are downloaded to portable media devices, such as iPods. |
| Cable: Nielsen tracks over 80 cable networks. Those networks, which have fewer WGA-covered shows than broadcast, could pick up audience. |
| Internet: Consumers can watch user-generated videos or vintage TV shows on computers, pocket phones and portable “media players.” |
| The Response |
| Reruns: This go-around cable has late-night shows, namely Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, which will likely go to reruns. |
| Pickups: Owners of broadcast networks now also own cable networks. For example, NBC could turn to USA Network, Bravo and Sci Fi Channel for content. |
| Broadcast: Fox could expand American Idol, televising more audition footage. |
BOON FOR WEB VIDEO?
Or frustrated viewers could seek out programming online, going to streaming-video alternatives like YouTube.
“You might start to see people switching to broadband digital media, watching on that,” said Horizon Media senior vice president and director of research Brad Adgate. “You could sit and certainly watch some consumer-generated content, or watch old shows that are suddenly available on things like Hulu.com.”
Added Brill, “Viewers have way too many choices [including online options] to subject themselves to low-quality reality shows and repeats of regular series.”
With a strike, daily late-night shows would immediately be affected, with The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report likely to go into reruns.
Broadcast and cable networks alike will have enough episodes of scripted dramas to tide them over through the end of the year, so it wouldn’t be until January that viewers feel the strike’s impact.
And many of cable’s big scripted dramas, which fall under WGA jurisdiction, debut in the summer. So, unless the strike is long, they would be relatively unaffected.
The last strike kicked off some eventual trends in primetime programming. It “opened the door for the first time for the mainstream networks to offer a pretty good amount of reality programming,” according to Ancier.
Fledgling Fox, without any strong scripted fare, was willing to take a chance on a reality show called America’s Most Wanted, which had been airing on its TV stations, Ancier said. A year later, Cops was also on Fox’s lineup and reality shows became a network cornerstone.
Brill predicted programmers will take a page out of the networks’ 1988 strike playbook and run more reality shows and newsmagazines.
The 1988 strike allowed genres like newsmagazines to thrive, according to Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular TV. He said the best example of that was CBS’s 48 Hours, “which got an audience it may otherwise not had if competing against scripted shows.”
Although newsmagazines have become almost a “moribund” genre, they may see a resurgence with the strike, Thompson added.
In the event of a strike, Brill suggested that Fox could expand its super-hit American Idol, which returns early next year, by airing more footage of its auditions.
Producers can take advantage of post-1988 corporate consolidation, with media conglomerates now owning broadcast and cable networks.
“You might start to see broadcast networks partnering with their cable networks, where they could get shows that ran on cable,” Adgate said. “Maybe [FX’s] The Shield would run on Fox, or Damages, if it’s appropriate.”
NBC Universal, for example, has been exploring using shows from its cable channels — such as USA Network and Bravo — on the NBC network in the event of a strike, an official familiar with the situation said.
“Every option is on the table [for broadcast networks] — more news, potentially sports,” said Katz Television Group director of programming Bill Carroll. “They’re going to pull everything out of the hat that they can if it’s a prolonged situation.”
Shortly after the 1988 strike, broadcast ratings slipped slightly and cable gained. TV-station affiliates for the Big Three — ABC, CBS and NBC — had a 41.7 rating in primetime, versus 43.7 the prior year, according to Nielsen Media Research. Cable was up, garnering a 7.1, up from 5.5 the prior year. Back in 1988, Nielsen was measuring about 20 cable networks, compared with more than 80 today.
TOUGHER RECOVERY
It will be hard for broadcast to win back any audience it loses, TV historian Tim Brooks said.
“Once another medium, particularly cable, gets a chance to draw viewers away, they don’t come back, and that wasn’t the case in 1988,” he said. “It’s a really different situation now in terms of the potential for more permanent loss.”
In contrast, Thompson believes viewers will flock back to broadcast for their favorite dramas, rather than watch “a cat eat with a fork” on YouTube.
“When you think of the shows we loved best, whether it’s Lost or The Sopranos or The Mary Tyler Moore Show, they were told by brilliant writers,” Thompson said. “In the end, I think the industry is going to have to cede that fundamental basic value, and in doing so cede some of the real estate of these new technologies.”
The WGA wants residuals for DVDs to be doubled; residuals for TV shows that are streamed on the Internet; and 2.5% of “accountable receipts” for the reuse on content off new-media platforms.
The producers say they won’t increase DVD payments; that it’s premature to set equations for new-media compensation; and that streaming video is promotional, so no residuals should be paid.
TV and film writer David Kukoff, who is a guest lecturer at Northwestern University this year, argues that the WGA has to hang tough.
“I remind everybody in my classes that Laurel and Hardy essentially died broke,” he said. “Why? Because they didn’t foresee how they their work was going to be used in these new mediums [TV] over and over and over again. They essentially got no residuals.”
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