Thursday, November 8, 2007

Writers on Strike

(Dang it. I had this all typed up and then my laptop copped out on me. Anyway.)

I first heard about this a few days ago on Neil Gaiman's blog (scroll down to the first question in bold). I figured I'd share it here for those who didn't know. Since Gaiman writes within both the publishing and media industries, he is affected but not wholly.

Essentially, writers in the media industry have gone on strike, as of Monday I believe. They're protesting in order to receive a portion of teh revenues garnered from DVD sales and internet shows and films. The first shows to be immediately affected are the late night talk shows, like "The Daily Show." These programs rely on up-to-date commentary from that same day, thus have no scripts on back-up. They immediately went to reruns.

Next up are the half-hour comedies, which, although they have scripts, tend to alter them over teh week they're filming (if my understanding is correct). This includes shows like "The Big Bang Theory" and "'Til Death."

After that come the hour-long dramas, which generally have scripts through November, but at least some of them don't have scripts for the end of the season, so if the strike doesn't end soon, the last episodes of the season may be affected for these programs. "Desperate Housewives" falls under this category, as would "Heroes," I suppose (and this week's was such a good eipsode).

So here are a few other places with information about the strike:

CNN (from Monday, November 5)

NPR (from Tuesday, November 6)

MSNBC (from Wednesday, November 7)

And here are some pictures from The Guardian.

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