The WGA is on Strike

The Writer's Guild of America is on strike as of today. Gizmodo's Linda Codega has an article that gives an in-depth breakdown of how that might impact what you watch for entertainment, but to summarize: If you like a scripted show it's eventually gonna be in trouble. This immediately impacts nightly talk shows with monologues (Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel, Fallon--which is also the order of which I enjoy watching them the most to least) and means we don't get a new Saturday Night Live for the rest of this season. That's a bummer as Pete Davidson was set to host. Then, other scripted shows that don't have everything written will be delayed/canceled. Before you know it, movies won't be made either and tons of stuff in pre-production will wither away. 

The last strike occurred in 2007-2008 for 100 days and it was a royal mess. This strike is focused on how writers of television shows and movies want better pay, better residual in the streaming era we are now in, and protections against AI being used to quickly craft a junky script they could theoretically get paid peanuts to patch up. 98% of the WGA voted in favor of a strike when a deal could not be reached with the  Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, so everyone is fed-up and ready to either be treated better or quit working until they get proper recognition/pay/etc.

As I said, this impacts a small number of shows immediately but will delay work on a lot of stuff in the long term. The longer this goes on the more unscripted television you can expect. In other words, I hope you like junky reality television because there is going to be even more of it if the strike takes a while. I do like trashy reality shows, but I also enjoy scripted programming and I want the people who make it to receive fair compensation. Therefore, I'm not happy there is a strike, but I totally understand why there is one and support the WGA. I still really would have liked to see Pete Davidson on SNL this Saturday, to be completely honest, but again, I offer my full support.