America’s Next Top Model Season 1 winner Adrianne Curry
STRUCK DUMB: KEEPING IT REAL: The conventional wisdom is that the Hollywood writers’ strike might not end up seeing many real improvement for striking TV and movie writers, but that it would likely be a gift for the reality TV industry in the short term, at least, if not in the long term, much as the last major strike in 1988 is considered a major factor influencing the networks’ embrace of reality programming.
The Writers Guild of America was aware of this going into the strike, apparently, but their attempt to try and head the networks off at the reality pass ended in resounding failure last year, as recalled by Daniel Blau in a story that ran in the Los Angeles Times last week. Early last year, Blau was one of 12 story editors working on America’s Next To Model, and found himself approached by members of the WGA’s Reality Organizing Committee, who wanted to initiate a walk-out on at least one high-profile reality show as part of a campaign to unionize reality TV.
It’s an open secret that there are, in fact, writers helping script reality shows, but that they go by titles such as “story editor” and “segment producer,” and their marginal status in the industry – low pay, few benefits, little job security or legal recourse – was only enhanced by the distaste of the WGA rank-and-file for reality TV in general and its non-unionized toilers.
The guild has been itching for a strike for at least two years, and they knew that folding reality TV under their umbrella was a must. “Without reality programs to fall back on, the TV networks would be hit harder and faster by any strike,” wrote Blau. “It would have been a fine strategy, had it worked.”
Early last summer, Blau and his fellow story editors had meetings with WGA organizers over lunch, and were encouraged to hit the picket lines, with the implication that the guild was fully behind them. They wondered why other reality shows weren’t part of the labour action, and asked if a strike could be avoided by less radical tactics, such as petitions to the National Labor Relations Board or demands for overtime. They were told to stick to the plan, and in July 20 of last year they read a statement to 100 supporters and the media, picked up their WGA strike signs and started walking the picket line.
Blau would never show up for another day of work again. “The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished. The guild had vanished from our cause, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents the video editors, swooped in to unionize the show, freezing the WGA out of Top Model for good.”
On the eve of the strike, most of the members of the Reality Organizing Committee were unaware of the Top Model strike, and the guild’s support dissolved in indifference or outright hostility to “lowly reality types.” And now the guild faces a long, potentially crippling strike that could change the landscape of TV programming even more than the ’88 strike that is universally acknowledged as a failure. In spite of all the creativity the guild supposedly represents, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of common sense.
