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When the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) could not come to an agreement on their contract, the board of writers voted to go on strike. Their strike started on November 2, 2007 and lasted three months and ten days, ending on February 12, 2008. What will this mean for the viewers at home who have been stuck watching reruns and/or reality TV shows, and what are television networks doing now that the writers are back?
The reason why the WGA went on strike was because they could not reach an agreement with the on their contract, the Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA). After the WGA initiated the strike, over twelve thousand other writers joined the strike. Everyone from cartoon writers to Broadway show writers went on strike.
The writers’ strike that just came to a close cost Hollywood around $2 billion, which was four times more than the previous 1988 writers’ strike, and the 2007/2008 writers’ strike lasted six weeks less than that of the 1988 strike. This strike not only affected Hollywood, but it also affected the millions of viewers at home. Many seasons of shows were put on hold, and reruns started playing. While this happened to many shows, there were still those shows, like Family Guy, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien, that kept going, but was this a good decision? When asked his opinion on this, Sam Lenn said that, “It made me mad that Family Guy continued to make new episodes but with different writers. The original writers are what made Family Guy what it is.”
When compromises were finally made to the contracts of writers, such as writers getting their share of the digital-media market, the WGA came together to vote on whether they would return to work or not. After the vote, 92.5 percent of the WGA felt that they should stop the strike, and 93.6 percent of the WGA voted to ratify the new three-year contract.
Now with the writers' strike over, networks are starting to shoot new episodes and seasons of their shows, and if you need to catch up on the older episodes most networks have them available for viewing on their websites.
With a new contract for writers and new episodes on the way, everyone from writers and television networks to the viewers are more content then they were during the writers strike.
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