Sunday, January 13, 2008

Writers Strike Continues

With the Writers Guild of America's strike against the movie studios and TV networks into its third month with no end in sight, the effects continue to show up not just on your TV screen, but also at the multiplex. A roundup:
  • The Golden Globe Awards, that informal gathering of movie and TV stars boozing it up at a ballroom somewhere in Hollywood, was reduced to a nationally-televised news conference because no movie or TV star would be caught dead crossing a picket line. Before that, the People's Choice Awards changed from a live telecast to a pretaped highlights show aired on CBS. We might be watching the wave of the future, because networks are increasingly reluctant to risk heavy fines caused by some awards winner or presenter lobbing an F-bomb or a crude sexual reference on live TV.
  • People are already asking if the Academy Awards will meet the same fate if the strike continues. Count on it.
  • All the late-night talk show hosts are back, whether they have writers or not. Jay Leno does his own jokes, even though the union tells him not to. Conan O'Brien spins his wedding ring on his desk. David Letterman shaves his beard. Leno and Jimmy Kimmel appear on each others' shows. Now that's entertainment.
  • American Idol returns as scripted shows run out of original episodes.
  • Following the lead of Letterman, Tom Cruise's United Artists and The Weinstein Company (all independent producers) made separate deals with the Writers Guild to get their people back to work.

Read any good books lately?

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