Game shows and union busting

[DrBear]

Over at his "News from me" blog, Mark Evanier comments on one reason game shows get on the air - insurance against strikes by various entertainment unions.

[GS Warehouse]

If you've ever watched Will & Grace, you could argue there already is a writers' strike.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Dec 22 2005, 06:27 AM\']Over at his "News from me" blog, Mark Evanier comments on one reason game shows get on the air - insurance against strikes by various entertainment unions.

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[/quote]

Nit Pick Dept.:  I'm sure it passed Mr. Evanier's mind that AFTRA has jurisdiction over videotaped television, not SAG.

Of course, if NBC wanted to runaround in the case of a strike, they've got that little shopping channel in Minneapolis called ShopNBC that's 100% non-union.  Not that I would want to suggest that, but if worse came to worse Shawn Wilsie (who used to post on a.t.g-s in the day) could salivate at the prospect of replacing Howie on "DOND" if a SAG/AFTRA strike comes up.  Once again, if NBC's crazy enough to do that.

This all comes back to the 1980 SAG strike, in which we had all of those "Real People" knockoffs popping up on the air with AFTRA talent who wasn't in SAG since dramatic programming was held up by the strike.

[chris319]

[quote name=\'GS Warehouse\' date=\'Dec 22 2005, 09:25 AM\']If you've ever watched Will & Grace, you could argue there already is a writers' strike.

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M.E. makes an excellent point WRT writers. DOND requires absolutely no writing or research whatsoever in the traditional game show sense. The framework of the emcee language is already in place. There are no questions, puzzles, stunts, jokes, etc. to be written. This means lower overhead for the producers as they don't have to pay people to come up with material, regardless of whether they are called "writers", "segment producers" or "editorial staff". I can only think of a few shows which could get by entirely without writers in the traditional game show sense: WML?, IGAS, non-puzzle versions of Password, Pyramid, perhaps WOF ...