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ShareSo the writers’ strike continues in Hollywood, late night shows are in repeats, big name producers are carrying picket signs and ... yeah, I know, most people don’t really care, at least not until their shows run out.
It all sounds selfish and vague. As “30 Rock” creator and star, Tina Fey, says, it seems that some lucky people are fighting with some very lucky people.
In truth, the fight is important to everyone, and not in a justice-for-the-oppressed-writer way, though as a guy who writes for a living, I’m always ready to make that argument. This strike, and how things might play out, will eventually reach all of us, because it’s about the future, theirs and ours and anyone’s who watches anything with moving pictures.
That’s partly because of what they are fighting over, and partly because it could change everything about the way we watch TV.
Now it’s starting to sound major league. That’s because it is.
First, the issues. Stay with me and I’ll be brief. In overly simple terms, writers now only get a tiny piece of DVD sales - between 4 and 5 cents per DVD sold. They wanted to double that to about 8 cents.
They have been willing to drop that demand, but are adamant that they get paid something when shows they write get streamed, downloaded or used on Web sites. Now, they get nothing. All those iTunes downloads, for instance? Zip.
The writers sound reasonable enough, and you can understand their anger. Their DVD deal basically got made back in 1988 - before there were DVDs. They don’t want to miss the boat on the digital world, too.
The studios and networks say that evolving digital world of streaming and downloading has made their profits smaller and more volatile, and that no one has figured out where it’s going or how to make the big bucks off it they make now off TV, movies and DVDs.
The studios say they don’t want to lock into a deal when things are so uncertain and erratic. That sounds reasonable, too, though it’s hard not to reflexively mistrust Hollywood moguls, or the world’s largest corporations, or in this case, a combination of both.
So that’s what they’re fighting over: the future.
Here’s how it could play out for all of us if the strike lasts a while - which is looking more and more likely. The last writers strike in 1988, by the way, went five-months plus.
Already, the late-night shows are repeats. By mid-to-late January, most of the scripted series on prime time will be repeats, or there will be midseason replacements with six or eight fresh episodes before they repeat, too. Daytime soaps may go dark, or they may get written by producers and executives, and won’t that be good?.
You’ve probably heard all that. And what it will do for most people is break the connection to network TV - to “Grey’s Anatomy” or “24” or “Heroes,” shows many people rarely miss now. At first, it’ll be weird, but then it’ll be like summer - a vacation from having to show up every week. The habit will be gone. We’ll be doing other things.
There will still be reality shows, but with the rare exception of an “American Idol,” or a “Dancing with the Stars” or “Survivor,” the lure won’t be the same. Network ratings will drop, maybe 5 to 10 percent in January, then more and more, according to some analysts.
Meanwhile, all the new scripted shows that would have premiered in fall 2008 will be wisps, just ideas or half-done scripts. In normal times, the networks sell those shows to advertisers in May, to the tune of $8 billion or more. This May? Nothing.
So where will the advertising go? Where will viewers go?
Probably, online. I give you the root of the fight: Welcome to our digital future.
A pause for some perspective. This world of digital entertainment - streaming video, on-demand viewing, downloads and who-knows-what’s-next, is coming, no matter what.
The technology is getting better exponentially, and we’re only in the first generation or so of devices like digital video recorders and phones with video-download capacity. Those things, and new things, will get better and simpler, and everyone will use them, the way we use that once-new-fangled thing called a computer. Or a TV.
But if the networks keep control, that world will probably resemble something like the world we know now. The changeover would possibly go from CBS now providing us a week’s worth of shows on the network that are available when we hit the “on” button, to, maybe, CBS offering a week’s worth of shows, and us deciding to buy them show by show on demand, or online, the way we can buy single movie viewings now.
Or maybe we’d subscribe to a service the way we subscribe to cable, or maybe it would just be cable, and we’d get access to all those CBS shows. Maybe it would be something else.
But if this strike continues, if the current TV world breaks down, we may just get chaos. The business model will be a wreck for advertisers. The compensation model will be a mess for writers and directors and stars. They will all look elsewhere, and try anything. It could be like the wild West, with all sorts of programming options out there - online, on-demand, as buyable downloads, as packages floating in the ecosystem that we can gather and watch. Who really knows?
For viewers, that means we’re going to have to go find stuff, instead of having it brought to us as it is now. There might be thousands of options, and we’ll have to sort through them. (And good luck to people overwhelmed by TV listings now.)
This spreading of home entertainment options may mean the advertising and the profits will be spread thinner. Maybe that’s good. More people cash in. But it’ll also mean there will be fewer big-money studios to fund blockbuster films like “The Lord of the Rings” and the coming “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” or high-end TV shows like “Lost” and “24.” Production values cost money.
We’re already seeing a start to all this on sites like YouTube, Break.com, Revision3 and the rest. And a big step got taken forward last week with “Quarterlife,” a social Web site built around a near-network quality series of eight-minute episodes from respected producer/directors Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.
“Quarterlife,” the web series, started last week and tells the story of some mid-20s folks focusing their lives. It feels like a blend of “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething,” which makes some sense because Herskovitz and Zwick created both of those.
“Quarterlife” was headed for the Web long before the writers strike, just as the digital video has been exploding on its own for a couple years. And the technological changes driving all that exploding have been coming and increasing at a seemingly insane pace. A digital world is our future, for entertainment and everything.
As for the strike, you can see why writers care so much about money from digital delivery - that’s where everything will eventually go. That’s also the reason the studios care so much - that’s where their money will come from.
The strike itself is pushing writers toward that digital future even faster. They’re putting daily updates, rants, skits and communiques online on YouTube. Some of them may decide, at some point, to turn those into a series, sell a couple ads, and, voila, they’ll not only be competition for the studios, they’ll be keeping all the money they make.
Both sides still have some ability to control their digital futures, at least for a while. But soon, writers, studios, networks and all the rest of us will be facing a world of digital anarchy. Or maybe they’ll settle the strike, and we’ll get anarchy, anyway.
And maybe that will be a great thing for viewers, maybe it’ll just be that chaos. That’s the thing about changing technology, and about the future, the primary law is the law of unintended consequences.
