The Writers Strike

It seems like everywhere you turn right now from the Sunday Paper to Entertainment news programs everyone wants to sum up 2008. That’s what January is all about. It is a time to recuperate from Christmas, set goals for the new year, and look back at the year that just took place. I was looking through a magazine this afternoon that featured yet another "Year In Review" article. It mentioned the writer’s strike which I had completely forgotten about. Alas, the grueling 14 weeks of turmoil that seemed to drag on forever doesn’t seem so significant almost a year later.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve mentioned the writer’s strike on this blog. This excerpt was taken from The Kitchen Chronicles, August 28, 2008

“I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I guess I felt like if the writers were going on strike for something that they were well compensated for (compared to the average American) for something that they loved to do, then I would go on strike for something that I wasn’t compensated for and I was sick of doing. Thus began my cooking strike”

That pretty much sums up how the writers strike affected me back in January and February of 2008. On the other hand this was an important issue for the Writers Guild of America. Times are changing and while more people are enjoying their television programs through the medium of DVD and the internet the studios are benefiting from it and the writers are expected to sit back and crank out scripts without seeing any money trickle down. So they quit crankin’ for a while to prove their value. In the mean time lots of people were involuntarily out of work, and many shows were never able to recover from the off air break. Some such as 24 are just now airing an entire year later!

After a long hiatus the writer’s are back and we all get to watch our favorite programs again and . The awards shows are back too, which may or may not be a good thing, but anyway everything is pretty much the way it was in the first place.

Was it worth it? Was it worth the hundreds of millions of dollars it cost what we now know was an already faltering economy? Did the production companies learn a lesson? Do we have better appreciation for the writer’s behind our favorite programs? I don’t really know. The point is the writers felt like they needed to take a stand and set a precedent before it was too late. They fought long and they fought hard, and they won… I think.