Fresh on the heels of last summer`s debilitating 22-week writers` strike, the TV industry is headed toward a possible July strike by the Screen Actors Guild.
As ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard said ruefully in Los Angeles last week, ”Isn`t this great?”
What is ABC going to do about it? Stoddard said he can have additional episodes tacked ”onto the order this year, which is very difficult because of last year`s strike,” or he can ask producers to cancel the normal spring hiatus and start production early ”in order to get three or four episodes under the belt” before a strike could start.
But his best plan may be to ”hope and pray the SAG strike does not take place.”
An actors` strike couldn`t come at a worse time. The three networks suffered a combined 8 percent drop in viewing levels in September and October. ABC research director Alan Wurtzel blames strike-induced program delays and replacements for at least 50 percent of that drop.
And the strike`s effects aren`t over. ”We`re still recovering,”
Stoddard said. ”I will tell you that the effects of the writers` strike will not be over until approximately a year from now.
”We are still deep into it on the air. Development is affected by it; we have, in essence, no mid-season development.” The ”mid-season” shows premiering on ABC this spring actually were developed last spring, before the strike began.
Brandon Tartikoff, NBC Entertainment president, said the strike made the season ”a little bit more unusual than past seasons, maybe a little bit more unusual than any of us would have liked.
”The effects of that strike will be felt through mid-season of this year as well as into next fall because everything is necessarily backed up.”
For viewers, the most obvious strike effect was the delayed start of the new season. In 1987, all 75 network series had premiered by the first week in October. This season, only 28 of 79 series were on the air by that date.
The final ”fall” premieres didn`t occur until Dec. 6, with the season debuts of ”Moonlighting,” ”thirtysomething” and ”Midnight Caller.” And that doesn`t count four planned fall series-”Tour of Duty,” ”A Fine Romance,” ”ABC Mystery Movie” and ”HeartBeat”-that were held until January.
But it`s not just a question of delays. ”The quality is hurting,”
Stoddard said, ”and it`s going to take a long time to recover it. Just when we begin to recover it-bang, SAG.”
Tartikoff said he, too, was ”disappointed a little bit in terms of what we`ve been able to put on and also sometimes the quality of what we had to put on this fall … When certain series or movies were not available, we rushed forward on other projects that could take their place. Some of them were good; some of them were not so good.”
Series television suffered, too, from the rush to get back into production after the strike.
”It was unbelievably difficult, and I hope I never have to go through that again,” said ”Murphy Brown” producer/writer Diane English. ”To have to write scripts that quickly was really difficult.”
The writing rush short-circuited the normal network review process, designed to prevent weak scripts from being taped and weak episodes from being aired.
The result, Tartikoff said, was new shows lost the ”safety net that we have underneath all series, which is the ability to juggle episodes.
”Usually when we premiere in the fall, we will have shot six or seven episodes and have the ability to take some of our earlier shot episodes that may not have turned out so well and move them to the back of the bus. We did not have that kind of luxury this fall.”
The most obvious casualty? ”Tattinger`s,” which chased the audience away with a dreary, violent second episode and never got them back. That episode, Tartikoff said, ”put the series away.”
With the writers still struggling to catch up, you can expect fewer new episodes of most shows this season. Stoddard figures most series will produce 15 episodes instead of the normal 22.
Was the strike worth all the trouble it caused? ”Frank`s Place” creator Hugh Wilson, a strike supporter, isn`t sure. ”Once we were out, I wanted to win,” he said. ”I just don`t know what we were winning.”
The losers, said writers` guild negotiator Cynthia Thompson, were the networks and the actors.
If she`s right, the networks and the actors would have to be crazy to let history repeat itself-which is why it just might.
