Harbert: ’88 Strike Left Me Scrambling

Agita around the Writers Guild strike is all too familiar to Ted Harbert, CEO of Comcast Entertainment. In 1988, the last time the writers went on strike, he was the executive vice president of primetime series at ABC, tasked with filling the network’s schedule once the original scripted series episodes were exhausted.

“I took every reality pitch, every ‘best of’ compilation,” he recalled. The network even reviewed the content in the Columbia Studios vault and reshot some episodes of the classic Police Story series, he said.

The current walkout isn’t something that gives Harbert a good feeling. He thinks the writers feel they didn’t get a good deal in 1988.

Comcast’s E! Entertainment is well situated in the face of the strike, for its staples are reality shows and evergreens like True Hollywood Story. The writers on such shows as E! News Daily are not WGA signatories (writers at news operations are represented by a different union).

Harbert said E! will spend more time promoting the fact it has original programming. Such promotion is not impolitic, he said, in the face of the strike. Programmers, he said, “want what we want, and always will: more viewers.”

The 1988 strike was a boon to cable, and this work stoppage may be too, he said. The fall ratings numbers for the new broadcast season were not strong, he indicated. “There are real problems even without a strike … This is coming at a very bad time for the business,” Harbert said.