More shows shut down
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At first, it looked like the WGA was going to wait until SAG's contract expired sometime near June of next year, in order to give both guilds extreme bargaining power that would shut down everything almost overnight. Instead, in what now looks like a stroke of genius, the writers walked off the lot just three days after their contract expired on October 31st, right in the middle of the fall television season.With a number of high profile actors and writing/producing "showrunners" refusing to cross picket lines, no fewer than seven shows came to a screeching halt or were disrupted by the strike and were unable to continue with production. Now on the 11th day of the strike and the 16th day writers have not had a contract, more shows are running out of scripts to shoot and are shuttering their doors for the winter.
NBC has taken its second big hit in as many days after The Office went dark, with this fall's bust remake Bionic Woman calling it quits last week. According to Hollywood Reporter, Battlestar Galactica will shut down sometime today.
HR reporters note that with the faltering dollar, run-away productions are no longer cost effective for Hollywood, and I personally speculate that this strike may serve as a "reset" for the industry that would precipitate a shift back to the United States for production that would benefit the state economy, and deal a crushing blow to Canadian workers for the much more popular U.S. shows who would be forced to move South and compete with a much larger and high powered talent pool looking for work.
I know a lot of them think this is an opportunity to showcase native shows for American consumption, but if they aren't careful, they could losing it all in the process.
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