The waring sides in the Hollywood writers' strike don't give a hoot about the public.Sure, we TV viewers haven't suffered much yet, but the future looks bleaker than Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives after the tornado, according to the Wall Street Journal:
Artful scheduling of remaining episodes of scripted shows will get them through January. Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS)'s ABC Television, for instance, has a couple of episodes of Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy that it can stretch out with some techniques such as longer recaps of previous episodes. After that, the network has a couple of new mid-season scripted shows it is planning to debut.
Oh no, does that mean that we are going to keep hearing about the tornado? Will the slow, torturous relationship between Meredith Grey and Derrick Shepherd continue to move along at a glacial pace on Desperate Housewives? Do the networks want people to start reading?
This creates serious problems for the networks. What will ad sales people from ABC, CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s NBC and News Corp (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox talk about during the upfronts? Will the swell parties be canceled? I've heard The Weather Channel really knows how to get down.
Besides book publishers and video-game makers, the real winner in the Hollywood labor dispute is going to be Joey Greco, the ultra-creepy host of Cheaters. Everything about the program, in which people confront their cheating partners, is pathetic. The people make the folks on Cops seem like geniuses. The commercials, including one for "natural man enhancement," are pathetic. Nonetheless, it is becoming one of my guilty pleasures now that Saturday Night Live is in reruns.
Maybe I am too easily entertained. Unfortunately, so are most Americans. If the pipeline for scripted shows dries up, who knows what sort of sleazy reality programs are going to come on the air. They will make Cheaters seem like Sesame Street.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-11-2007 @ 10:44PM
dre said...
greed from hollywood and the writers
I hope they dont settle anything. The independent production companies will rack up. People will get bored of reruns and start doing other things and it will take sometime to get the viewership back up.
12-12-2007 @ 1:58PM
Jesse said...
I would care about this strike and the outcome if the product of these "writers" had an ounce of quality. Television today is garbage. It's time for the viewers to forget about Hollywood.