Reality-Based Communities

The Hollywood Reporter reports that CBS News is inching closer toward joining the Writers' Guild strike. The AFP headline is misleading; they're not striking yet, they've just voted to authorize striking.

Meanwhile, in the LAT, Daniel Blau, a former writer for America's Next Top Model, opines that this strike would be going better for the writers had the WGA been better prepared before the short-lived ANTM strike of 2006. Blau suggests that the WGA bungled their strategy. On the one hand, they organized a Reality Organizing Committee tasked with investigating industrywide solutions. On the other hand, the WGA approached asked 12 writers from one television show (ANTM) to testcase a reality programming strike. It didn't work out: All 12 writers were fired, and ANTM eventually organized with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (video editors). (Inadvertently sad: "They bought us lunch.")

Blau insinuates that there was some consciousness among the organized writers about admitting reality writers into their ranks. Studios pump out shows like Who Has Got a Stapler? for pennies on the dollar, meaning that (from the WGA writers' perspective) reality television is a scab genre. Meanwhile, writers on reality shows aren't doing better by organizing with smaller unions whose needs don't fit their own even if some aspects of the job descriptions do. A writer on Project Runway has the same interest in residuals from an online broadcast as a writer for Friday Night Lights. Probably any reality writer is also a video editor of sorts, and, in fact, a Project Runway writer's work might be closer to that of an FNL editor. It's still shortsighted for the WGA to stiff-arm reality programming when the organization of reality writers is so critical to their own. Clearly the place to settle these sorts of professional/artistic debates is on the company softball field.

It will be a reversal of 2006 fortunes, then, if nonfiction news writers do join the WGA strike. Presumably the WGA will not turn them down for their heterodox work. I don't see what CBS News writers stand to gain in a strike over online residuals; maybe they are simply joining in solidarity.

UPDATE: A CBS insider passes along this company kthxgiving joke:

A turkey farmer was always experimenting with breeding to perfect a better turkey.

His family was fond of the leg portion for dinner and there were never enough legs for everyone. After many frustrating attempts, the farmer was relating the results of his efforts to his friends at the general store get together. "Well I finally did it! I bred a turkey that has 6 legs!"

They all asked the farmer how it tasted.

"I don't know," said the farmer. "I never could catch the darn thing!"