LAUREN PIESTER
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Monday, Nov. 19, 2007

IF YOU KNOW me at all, you know that I love TV. I also love movies. Turns out, there are actually PEOPLE who write these movies and TV shows. Who knew? And, it also turns out that they're not getting paid enough.

On Nov. 5, the Writers Guild of America announced that they are on strike. Of course, it is all the Internet's fault. The writers barely get a nickel for hard copies of their work that is sold, and now they don't get anything from the shows and movies you can get online.

Previously, this wasn't a big deal. You couldn't get much more than pirated stuff online. Now, most networks have full episodes of most shows available online for free. A lot more people are watching, but now the people who really deserve the credit aren't getting what they deserve.

At first, I didn't think the strike would be that big of a deal. I thought it was just another stupid little thing that everyone was just making into a much bigger deal than it actually is.

In reality, for the entertainment industry at least, it's a huge deal. Depending on how long the strike lasts (and at this point, it could last quite awhile), come February, we'll have no new scripted shows. "American Idol" and "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" will be there, of course, but even I get tired of those.

"House," for instance, only has five or six episodes left, according to the magazine Entertainment Weekly. "Heroes" only has four, and "The Office" has two or three half-hour episodes yet to be released, and has, like most other comedies, stopped production indefinitely.

The movies will also suffer greatly. It's been predicted that 2009 will have very few movies in theaters, as it takes about two years for whatever is going on in Hollywood to show up on the screen. When the strike was just a serious threat, a lot of films were rushed into production, but we will probably see nothing like we did this year, with something like three new movies coming out every week.

Probably the biggest losers in this situation are the late-night talk shows. Most of the hosts themselves, like Jon Stewart, are members of the WGA and have stopped production of their shows, not just to support their fellow writers but also because without the writers they have nothing to say.

The many awards shows are also in serious danger. All major telecast award shows use writers, believe it or not. So the question now is not who will win best male actor, but will there even be awards shows? No one would watch without writers. It's not like those "talented" actors can write their own entertaining presentations.

How many hosts can do what Jimmy Kimmel did Sunday night at the American Music Awards — ad lib most of his performance? Plus, Jon Stewart, the host for what is quite possibly the biggest award show of them all, the Oscars, hasn't shown up to his own show for two weeks.

You might ask why the studio heads won't just give the writers the money they're owed. They most likely would, if they thought they had it. The thing is, no one can figure out how to make money off the Internet. Pirating happens so frequently, and it's almost impossible to totally control that, with so many sites out there and so many geniuses sitting in front of their computers. So the studios aren't really getting a lot of money either.

Another thing to think about is that there are other people working on these movies and shows besides the writers. The writers are super important, but there are also the actors, the directors, the hair and makeup people, the camera people, the sound and video editors, the costume or wardrobe people, the boom people (who hold the big fuzzy thing …), choreographers, set designers, etc. All of these people are also important.

The writers may not be getting the money they deserve, but by going on strike and preventing shows and movies from being produced, they are also preventing a ton of other people from getting what they deserve, and what they need to live. Basically no one in Hollywood is working right now, and that's not good for anyone.

The producers of most of the late-night talk shows are actually in talks to return to their studios early next month in order to avoid laying off people, according to Variety. They all want to come back together, so none of them seems like the bad, insensitive show that crossed the picket line first.

Basically, the entertainment industry is in the middle of a huge crisis, as I will be (though mine will be rather less serious) when all of my shows just become reruns, and I'll have to submit to reading books or doing my homework or something.

But in the end, however sad I am come February, I fully support the writers in their quest to get what they deserve, and want them to know that I'm standing right behind them in spirit, holding up my own sign. Just as long as the next two Harry Potter movies still come out on time, and the solution doesn't involve charging me to watch TV on the Internet.