The Strike Is On

The Writers Guild of America voted to strike starting on Monday due to a breakdown with studios over negotiating the royalties writers receive from DVD and internet sales of TV shows and movies. The strike has been looming for months and threatened the fall TV schedule as well as spring and summer movies. Depending upon how quickly the strike is resolved, the TV season may be very short as most shows are only a few weeks ahead on production of completed scripts. Once those run out, it will be re-runs, reality shows and game shows for the duration. On top of that, late night talk shows will likely go into re-runs immediately as they are written an produced on the fly.

Although I don't watch too much TV, there are a few shows that I follow and will be disappointed if they go on a long unscheduled hiatus. Number one in my mind is The Office which has been pretty funny so far this season and has a lot of potentially good story lines developing. Of course my favorite currently airing show is LOST, but it is on a long scheduled hiatus right now while new episodes are being filmed in Hawaii. Rumor had it that only 6 or 7 of the 16 episodes slated for this season would be finished if a strike was called, but according to the LOST Blog, scripts for 14 of the episodes are done. If that is true, then LOST could end up being the only show to be airing new episodes in the spring.