Old Hollywood mogul Jack Warner famously called writers "Schmucks with Underwoods."
Like Stephen Harper, Our Glorious Leader, those Hollywood moguls tend to get very irritated by writers. The laptop has replaced the Underwood but some things never change. You see, those wildfires in Southern California aren't the only thing causing panic and confusion down there. The entertainment industry is in a major showdown situation. There is the real possibility of a major strike by the union representing the people who write TV shows and movies. Or they could be locked out by the association representing the studios and production companies.
In fact, it's one of the few engaging and truly fraught dramas that has emerged from Hollywood over the last few months.
The battle is between the writers and the moguls, but if there's a shutdown, the fault is yours and mine.
Let me explain. People are watching less network TV as it airs, watching more TV on the Internet or simply waiting to buy the series on DVD. You're entitled, of course, but you're the problem, it seems. According to reports from L.A., some members of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are ready, willing and able to see an industry shutdown at this time. Why? Because on the TV side of the Alliance, this 2007/08 TV season is considered "dead on arrival" - there are few hits, and this is the best possible time to close down the industry because there is little to lose.
And, to some extent, that's true. Here we are, on the cusp of November, most of the new shows on the U.S. networks have arrived and not a single breakout hit has happened.
I don't know what you've been watching avidly, but my single must-see show from this season is ABC's Life, airing on Wednesday nights. It's a cop show with an emphatically skeptical air about the usual police-procedure dramas. It's not all plot - it's a kind of acrid ongoing thriller about a single cop, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) who was framed for a crime he didn't commit, then exonerated and is back on the job. The investigation of every crime he handles is imbued with a paranoid feeling of doubt.
There have been many praised and hyped shows, but few have created widespread enthusiasm among viewers. A lot of people have simply returned to Grey's Anatomy, ER and CSI, unimpressed by new series. Or they are buying last season's Heroes on DVD, along with the final season of The Sopranos. Younger people are watching TV on the Internet, when they feel like it.
At the same time, the industry's definition of a "hit" show is changing. Gossip Girl, the much-publicized CW series (airing on CTV, Tuesdays, here) about pampered Manhattan teenagers, drew 3.5 million viewers with its first episode. Almost a million viewers failed to return for the next episode but, as USA Today reported last week, the CW is very happy with Gossip Girl. That's because it's the No. 1 show among teenage girls - a hard to find audience for advertisers - and Gossip Girl episodes were streamed 1.25 million times on the CW website in the month since it first aired.
Then there's the interesting matter of Heroes, last year's big breakout hit for NBC. This year, the number of people watching Heroes is actually down, but the DVD of the first season sold 700,000 copies in six weeks. That's a lot of cash for the production company.And there, in those stats, is the core of the bitter standoff between the Writers Guild and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The writers know they're not getting their fair share of revenue from the episodes streamed on the Internet and from DVD sales. Since the last contract between the two sides was hammered out, several years ago, the Internet and DVD sales have become vastly more important.
The producers are saying, "screw you," but the "schmucks" with the laptops are right - their work leads to more revenues and they're not getting their due.
The dispute is hotter than the wildfires. The current contract with the producers runs out on Wednesday. Watch for Hollywood's best drama to continue, nastily and vigorously for some time. Like most good drama, it'll end in tears for somebody. And it's your fault - even if the TV industry is shot down, you'll buy and rent your DVDs and surf the Internet.
You've changed your habits; Hollywood is waiting to see if it has to change its economics.
Airing tonight: Mortgage Meltdown (Newsworld, 10 p.m. on The Passionate Eye) is a superb explanation of the near-collapse of the U.S. housing market and the sub-prime fiasco. In a program made for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, we get a close look at the craziness of the U.S. mortgage business. Reporter Paul Barry says, "This year and next, more than two million American families will lose their homes." Essentially, it is explained, housing prices in the U.S. kept rising and rising. So everybody thought that it was a gold rush - get your hands on a house and it would rise sharply in value. The way many people got their hands on a house was through the so called NINJA loan - no income, no job or assets. As an economics professor at Yale explains, "It's a remarkable delusion. ... Just buy a house and you'll be rich. It's amazing. I don't know how we got here, but we're here." And will it get worse? A real-estate agent in Riverside, Calif., says, "My projection, and the way I look at this, is that we're in the first-quarter of a four-quarter game."
Check local listings.