The Studios and the Networks Love the Strike

To Mr. Elisberg and all other strike supporters, I believe there is only one fundamental consideration regarding this strike: the studios and the networks love it. They absolutely love it. Most industry people I talk to here in New York, the land of the corporations that actually own the movie and television businesses, see the strike as the opportunity the producers have been waiting for to flush away a generation of unwanted deals with both writer/producers and actors.

They want to flush shows, pilot commitments, housekeeping deals. They want to sweep away as much of the current season and their future commitments as possible. Like Jeffrey Katzenberg's infamous memo, which actually presaged much of the current model for studio dealmaking, the networks and studios want a new reality for television, no pun intended. The strike is their best hope of realizing it. The WGA might have waited, beyond the holidays and beyond a looming recession in the US economy, until they were more certain that the producers cared enough to negotiate. Most of my acquaintances who are members of the WGA want to go back to work. Certainly not all, but most. They want the WGA to continue to negotiate, but they want the strike to end. They want to attempt to salvage some of this year's television season. They think the strike, within this time frame, was a miscalculation.

In spite of all of Mr. Elisberg's personal attacks (those writers are so bitchy!), I wish the WGA well. Especially as we come out of the holidays and the fate of the remainder of the current TV season seems grim. Many, many people are out of work. I hope that Mr. Elisberg and his kind prove as omniscient as he advertises them to be.