WGA strike casualties

According to this TV.com article, production has recently ceased on The 4400, Bionic Woman and Battlestar Galactica. Supernatural has a few weeks worth of scripts left before it shuts down, and Smallville should be able to remain in production until late January. Reaper will also shut down shortly. While not genre, the very enjoyable Psych has also shut down.

6 replies on “WGA strike casualties”

  1. Well…
    My DVR has been acting up lately. First it got replaced by a non-tivo DVR (thank you SO much DirecTV) which is not very good, and also is a bit broken, and then they sent me a replacement that doesn’t even power up all the way, and they refuse to just give me a non-refurbished receiver and pretty much insist a technician come over cause I had "3 bad DVRs in a row" and apparently the thing rebooting itself every 20 minutes can somehow magically be caused by bad signal. And in the meantime, my DVR misses 25% of it’s recordings and records unviewable shows another 25% of the time (though they’re fine if you watch them live but then why do I need a DVR).

    What I’m trying to say is, this writer’s strike couldn’t have happened at a better time for me. Thanks WGA!

    • Re: Well…

      apparently the thing rebooting itself every 20 minutes can somehow magically be caused by bad signal.

      Actually, I’d discovered that myself recently: I was trying to avoid the directv hddvr and have been picking the hd local channels over the air for about a year and a half or so. I’m right on the fringe between two areas, just barely get them, but it does work mostly. This summer, however, my tivo has been crashing frequently, and the real clincher was when I was reviewing the "channels I receive" and checking which of the local channels were actually working, when I would go to a channel that wasn’t quite coming in, the HD Tivo would lockup. It did it twice in a row.

      Coincidentally, I had recently gotten a replacement disk for my parent’s regular tivo from weaknees, as it had been crashing a lot, and they were still seeing some problems. When I was there a month or so ago, I discovered that one of the two coax cables from the dish was bad. After telling it it only had one coax fixed the problems, I’m no longer certain the disk was actually bad.

      Because of this, combined with SciFi HD requiring it, I caved and got the directv hddvr as well. It’s definitely more cumbersome, but useable.

      Being a month behind on shows however (too many shows and too little time), means I am also very grateful to the writers…

  2. Season 5?
    I didn’t even realise The 4400 had gone back into production. You’d think a fifth season renewal would have shown up on at least a few SF news sites…

    • Re: WGA strike

      Boo, I say. Boooooooo.

      What are the striking about anyway?

      They want to get paid, the studios think they should make money off their work, but that they shouldn’t have to pay them.

      • Re: WGA strike

        Boo, I say. Boooooooo.

        What are the striking about anyway?

        They want to get paid, the studios think they should make money off their work, but that they shouldn’t have to pay them.

        That’s certainly true, if a bit generalized. :)

        The specific issue that has resulted in the strike is that the studios don’t want to give writers a piece of the revenues from Internet "broadcasts" (streaming, downloads, etc.).

        One of the striking writers explained it rather well on Howard Stern last week when he said that studios are going to Wall Street telling them that they’re going to make money hand over fist on the Internet, while going to the negotiation table with the writers claiming they may never make a profit with Internet distribution. The bottom line is that writers get a piece (small, of course) of every VHS, DVD, rerun, etc. and simply want similar consideration for Internet sales (including "free" streams with commercial sponsors).

        The studios had hoped they could just screw over anyone who doesn’t negotiate an individual contract (like actors), and the WGA called them on it. I hate that the writers’ strike is going to take away some of my entertainment, but they’re 100% right here. All the times I’ve thought that professional unions were unnecessary, and now I see that I was wrong. Go writers!

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