strike joke

i barely watch any tv anymore anyways, so i’m less upset by all this than some, but some very interesting stuff is going on regarding the writer’s strike.

firstly, atlantis has been renewed for a fifth season of 20 episodes, and eureka for i believe another 13. atlantis season 4 is entirely filmed, the first half is done and the second half is in post, so barring scheduling changes for lack of other programming, the production at least will not be affected.

the show-runners just went on strike with the writers, which shut down many popular shows and got a lot of showrunners and their staffs fired, phones shut off, etc. it’s getting nasty quickly and it doesn’t look like hollywood is going to back down.

galactica employs more americans than canadians and will be affected in some way by the walkout, but it’s unclear just yet how badly. atlantis is largely staffed by canadian unions, and that may play to their advantage if the strike continues, since the canadians aren’t on strike. several popular canadian shows without us distribution deals might get picked up.

24 is on indefinate hold. they’d apparently completely reworked things very recently, and there’s simply not enough material to even get half a season, and since they don’t want to break in the middle and kill the dramatic tension, the whole thing is being pushed back until the strike is over.

heroes filmed a new ending for their mid-season break to double as a full season finale if needed.

j. michael straczynski, creator of babylon 5, who was working on kids tv at the time, predicts that this strike will have to last longer than the six-month strike in 1988 to get the desired effect, so it could be a long winter.

apparently, last time, star trek: the next generation cut season 2 from 26 to 22 episodes, and had to pull out four scripts from the mothballed ’star trek: phase two’ project to be reworked into next gen stories. i barely remember any of this, but apparently season two ended on a clip show, which is always a winning strategy. they pulled it back, of course, but that was a solid show. not everyone will be so lucky.

joss whedon has a new show with eliza dushku that may be among many new shows that never get a chance to succeed, being cancelled before even being aired for lack of material to work with. also, joss whedon is probably on strike at this point. maybe warren can give him back astonishing x-men for another 12 issues.

some say that the networks never fully recovered from the 80s strike, having permanently lost market share to cable networks like hbo and so on. given that i think that was a good thing, and that we’re on the verge of a revolution in content distribution already anyways, it’s going to be very interesting to see where we are in six months.

hopefully, paying a base subscription rate to stream ad-free video content onto our tvs, iphones, or whatever the hell else, and paying for the dvds if we want to own it forever, which we will then be able to rip and watch on our tvs, iphones, or whatever the hell else.

well, probably not. but give it ten years.