Five Weeks and Counting
“Scared to Death” reaired last night on CBS. Because of the WGA strike, there are only three more new episodes of Criminal Minds for season three.
An end to the strike doesn’t appear likely. Tuesday, Les Moonves, CBS chief executive, said that both sides were still far apart. “I am hopeful, I’m not terribly optimistic,” Moonves said, as the strike goes into its fifth week.
He added:
We are certainly not going to go dark…Ratings will probably not be as high without the influence of original programming, but costs will be down.
Schedule space can be filled with sports, reality shows, or specials. I said last week that the strike hadn’t really affected me…then CBS aired the best moments in Grammy history. I was wrong. If I didn’t know there was a writers strike, I’d think that there was a contest among the networks for worst evening programming ever.
But there are new episodes, and shows like Criminal Minds, L&O, Cold Case, Without a Trace, and NCIS, tend to do well in repeats. This is part of the reason why CM has been successful - you don’t have to watch it each time to enjoy it. It’s not a serial, so it’s easy to catch up. It’s also easy to watch an episode from last season. Some cast changes may have been made, but you know what’s going on and the episode is self-contained.
In other strike news, Ellen Degeneres and Carson Daly crossed picket lines and resumed production of their shows. While criticised for not supporting the writers, I think this was a good choice. The other people involved in production get to keep working. Some big names have been paying their out-of-work support people. Jay Leno is paying his staff while they’re down. His brothers in late night have done the same. David Letterman, Conon O’brien, Jimmy Kimmel, and Craig Ferguson will continue to pay salaries even as their shows go dark. This essentially comes out of their own pockets.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.