Now it’s getting ugly. When Writers don’t work, the shows don’t happen. And the fall-out is becoming depressing – All the folks who work the cameras, lighting, sound, make up, wardrobe, catering and a dozen other fields are getting caught in the net. And some are getting fired. The scripts might not come…but the mortgage bill certainly does. And a lot of very talented people no-one thinks about are now facing Christmas without a paycheck.
The Networks are now using the strike as camouflage to decimate their employee rosters by issuing suspension notices to hundreds of staff at independent production companies that have so-called ‘housekeeping deals’ with the Nets. Basically, anyone working for a company that doesn’t have a pilot or a show currently in production is gone…Or at grave risk.
This is horrific. Not only are the suits who run the Networks so intellectually and creatively barren they’re forced to rent other people’s creativity to make their own jobs even viable, they now plan to use the consequence of their insentient refusal to share the fruits of this indispensable collaboration as justification for abandoning those people to welfare.
The fact that Studios are issuing these notices so soon proves just how belligerent their attitude towards the WGA and its members truly is. These people are the Authors of such Nielsen-conquering cash-cows as Gray’s, Law and Order and dozens of other prime-time favorites. And this is their reward.
If the strike lasts much longer, many people believe the Studios will use the same ruse to cancel their less profitable movie deals – And all the attached staff. A standard studio contract contains a “force majeure” clause that allows a deal to be put on hold or dropped completely, without any penalty. But the target must have already been suspended for a certain time. And when you bear in mind that those in charge at the typical Network have permafrost for blood, two days is clearly enough.
We’ve all heard the Net’s favored option to fill gaps in the schedules is an increased diet of mind-rotting ‘Reality’ shows, because most are penned by non-union Writers. Well, hundreds of families are now facing the ‘Reality” of a miserable Christmas because their bosses refused to share the pie, then used the consequences as an iniquitous excuse to abandon them without true cause or justice.
If you can write a happy ending for this, let me know.
