Miners, postmen and teachers strike occasionally. Railway workers strike all the time (I've just checked, some are on strike today).
Doctors, policemen and lumberjacks tend not to. Scriptwriters, in my humble opinion, also fall into this group. But when Perez Hilton starts blogging about Eva Longoria joining the picket lines you know the world's gone a little crazy.
Apparently the Writers Guild of America's industrial action is already hitting film and TV executives where it hurts, not only in the US but also here in the UK.
More4 is already showing repeats of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The next series of 24, due to be aired on Sky One in January has been delayed indefinitely. The Office (I thought Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had written that already), Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives have all been affected and their screening here are likely to be delayed or series schedules could be a less regular affair.
The strike is now in its fourth day and the disagreement centres on my favourite topic, the internet. The writers aren't happy with what they're being offered by the Hollywood studios when TV and film content is streamed over the web.
But if you think this is a minor thing that will soon pass, think again. My inclusion of writers in the no-strike camp of occupations was breathtakingly wrong. When they do it, they do it properly.
When the WGA last walked out in 1988, they didn't go back to work for 22 weeks. Ouch.
Comments (1)
Not so sure about including doctors among the professions that never strike. Just try Googling it and see what you get. But the good news is that when doctors go on strike, the death rate plummets. According to a report in the British Medical Journal, a strike by Israeli doctors back in 2000 devastated undertakers' businesses. I can't help thinking of the odd television programme that could only be improved if they went ahead without the people who currently write the scripts.
Posted by Mark Crail | November 12, 2007 3:11 PM
Posted on November 12, 2007 15:11