What, exactly, is the writers' strike?

By Kevyn Bowling

In case you haven’t heard or noticed, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) is on strike. As of January 31, the strike has been going on 12 weeks and 3 days. The WGA has done this two times before, most recently in 1988. That strike lasted 21 weeks and 6 days. Of course this strike is over money, but specifically this strike deals with money, or the lack thereof, that writers receive over DVD sales and content written or viewed over the Internet.

Because of this strike, shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, and many others have been halted mid-season. Late night shows like Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, and The Colbert Report have already started airing new episodes without writers. With some of these shows one cannot notice a difference, but with some the lack of a script is noticeable. The strike hasn’t really been noticed in the movie industry yet, due to the amount of movies with scripts already finished before the strike began.

I like to think of television as a cesspool swimming with either bad actors (any reality TV star), actors waiting to make it to the silver screen (the blonde girl off Grey’s Anatomy), or washed up movie stars looking for another steady source of income (Charlie Sheen of Two and a Half Men). Reality TV shows have already begun to show episodes without a script. Yes, reality TV had scripts! If one paid close attention one could see the stars looking at an off screen Teleprompter whenever they talked to the camera.

Being a “writer” myself, I should be for the strike, but I am against it. It’s not like the WGA is a band of coal miners striking for better wages. The average salary of a member of the WGA is over $200,000 a year. Writing scripts for movies or television would not only be a great job, but an extremely easy one compared to working construction or mining coal.

I also think the WGA is being ridiculous thinking they can stop Hollywood. Yes, they have cost them over $1 billion in lost revenue, but that includes the janitors and non-rich workers companies have had to lay off due to the strike. Most TV shows and movies are horribly written anyway. All that is going to happen is TV is going to shove more reality and game shows down viewers' throats until the writers spend away their extravagant salaries and start writing again. The people who watch TV constantly are still going to watch it no matter what is on. The people who only watch a show or two will find another activity until their show comes back. There is enough programming to last the TV companies many years.

The strike will not last long enough to halt the movie industry. Producers who used to write episodes for their shows will cross the picket lines to write again when their babies (TV shows they created) face being killed.

Right now, the writers' strike is a splinter in the right pinky finger of America that will eventually work its way out.

Bowling, from Centre, is a freshman student at the University of Alabama and a member of Phi Eta Sigma. Send email to Kevyn at kevynbowling@hotmail.com.