As of last week, the Writers' Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike. Shows still in production can continue with completed scripts, but there are showrunners who are members of the WGA, and some of those showrunners have stopped working altogether on their programs.
I remember 2007, the last time writers went on strike. "24" lost basically an entire year (although this seemed to work out well, as the delayed season -- number 7 -- ended up with a strong and coherent plot, possibly because the writers had close to an extra year to plan things out, rather than making it up on the fly).
Back then, streaming had not taken off, so the only "on demand" viewing was via DVDs (of older shows/seasons) or TiVo of currently airing shows. Between network and cable TV, I had a full plate of TV watching, so much so that I would sit down with the fall TV preview issue of Entertainment Weekly and plot out a grid of days and time slots to see if there were any conflicts between shows. (Yes, my original TiVo could only record one channel at a time -- the horror!)
As you can imagine (given the theme of this blog), the writers' strike left me feeling despair at the time. What would I do for entertainment?!? Reality TV (whose writing staff has a different guild) could only go so far.
Today? I kind of understand the issues involved and I certainly hope the writers can negotiate a fair deal to take into account the new economics of streaming and on demand viewing, but I don't feel anything like the existential dread that I felt 16 years ago.
The only scripted network shows that I've been TiVoing this season are NBC's "The Blacklist" and CW's "Kung Fu." (I also watched "Magnum PI" but failed to set my TiVo to record it after it moved from CBS to NBC, so I'll have to catch up on that.) "The Blacklist" is in its final season, and "Kung Fu" might not be renewed. And I got rid of cable years ago. That leaves the streaming services, where I have Amazon Prime and Disney+. The strike will definitely impact me there, but the fact of the matter is that between what's already on those streaming services*, plus a whole bunch of C-dramas available on YouTube (I just started an interesting looking one called "Stealth Walker" about an undercover female narcotics agent), and DVDs**, I'm not going to run out of things to watch for a long time.
* Season 4 of Amazon's "Jack Ryan" starts next month! And there's "Citadel," which cost something like $50 million per episode...
** I rewatched "Prison Break" earlier this year, and am just over halfway through with "Justified" right now. "Battlestar Galactica" and "24" await their turns.
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