Sunday, December 30, 2007

As you probably know, the WGA has done a side deal with David Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants. WP gets its writers back; the WGA gets everything it was asking the AMPTP for.

Apparently some feature writers are miffed. They feel that if they're out of work, everybody should be out of work, I guess.

This seems selfish and short sighted. The more side deals AMPTP members do, the harder it becomes for the others not to grant the WGA the terms it's asking for. Who wants to be the company sitting at home with the sniffles while the other kids play?

The AMPTP isn't really a monolith, after all. NBC doesn't share revenues with CBS, nor do their parent companies. Putting Letterman back on the air -- not only with writers, but with star guests who may not be willing to cross a picket line for Leno -- doesn't help anyone but CBS.

As I read in the NY Times:

Every host who doesn’t work for CBS — like Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert — will now face the prospect of doing improv while Mr. Letterman is doing a nightly monologue and Top 10 list composed by his usual complement of writers. Beyond those advantages, the two CBS shows are expected to be able to line up far more impressive lists of guests. That’s because the Screen Actors Guild, which is supporting the writers, is explicitly directing its members — including every A-list movie and television star — to appear on the CBS shows. Alan Rosenberg, president of the actors’ union, issued a statement saying that his members “will be happy” to appear on the Letterman and Ferguson shows “with union writers at work and without crossing WGA picket lines.”

I'm not a Letterman fan myself, but you can bet I'll be watching on the 2nd. Now if only Jon Stewart can convince whoever owns his show to do the same deal, I can have my Daily Show back.

Labels: guild, strike

11:43 PM

3 Comments:

I'm in dude.

JAC

By  Crestmere, at 4:11 AM  

Happy New Year, Alex!

By  wcdixon, at 7:35 PM  

I'll be watching definitely. Anyway, I'm a sophomore high school right now and just finished reading your book "Crafty TV Writing." I found it incredibly helpful and very insightful. Living in Los Angeles, I definitely agree with much of your advice on moving to the city, and I'm currently working on developing a TV drama pilot about 3 talent agents trying to deal with their clients' problems while also dealing with their own. =]]

Anyways, I really just wanted to say thanks for writing such a helpful book and hope you the best in the rest of your writing career. ;-)

By  jordan fudge, at 12:03 AM  

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