The Front Page: How Hollywood’s writers’ strike could ruin your favourite TV shows

Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers and others strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Photo / AP

Hollywood writers have put down their pens and picked up placards in a fight for fairer working conditions.

Across the United States, the scribes behind many of the most popular shows on streaming services and television have initiated strike action after negotiations between the Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over a new contract broke down.

Speaking to The Front Page podcast from Los Angeles, New York Times entertainment reporter Brooks Barnes says the writers in the picket lines are furious.

“I was surprised when I got out there on the picket lines, [by] how angry they really are,” says Barnes. “This is not like the previous strike in 2007, when they were kind of going through the motions. These people are mad, and I think that probably means a long strike.”

The 2007 strike lasted 100 days and cost the Los Angeles economy about US$2.1 billion ($3.37b), but the real effect was seen in the impact on TV shows and the film industry. Myriad shows were pulled off the air, film productions were slowed down and the quality of the output suffered enormously. We are already seeing a similar trend emerge with the current strike.

“Immediately, late-night talk shows, like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert, went dark,” says Barnes.

“Some daytime television shows that relied on writers have gone into repeats immediately. And the next phase will be TV shows that are currently in production that have a stockpile of scripts.”

Once those scripts run out, those productions will face challenges to bring something to life.

Shows like House of the Dragon will still go ahead as all the scripts were turned in prior to the strike, but this doesn’t mean everything will run according to plan.

Barnes explains that shows will often have writers on set to fix scenes or lines that don’t quite work when the production starts. Without those writers, the onus will ultimately fall on the people present on the set to fix the writing.

An extreme version of this problem eventuated on the set of the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, with lead actor Daniel Craig having to rewrite parts of the script in the middle of filming. Barnes says that Hollywood is no better prepared this time, and we’ll undoubtedly see the results in the end products that are released over the course of the year.

“Studio executives are saying that they don’t want to do that again, but when you have a release date and investors on Wall Street breathing down your neck, you start making decisions you have to.”

So, which shows are currently in the firing line? How long could this go on? Will we have to endure another period of poorly written movies and shows? And what does this mean for those large entertainment companies so dependent on writers in order to actually make anything??

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page to hear more about how this industrial action could affect you.