“I know what your thinking,” David Letterman said. “Somebody writes this crap?”
A few years ago the Wife and I entered a costume contest, won trips to London, and spend a few weeks in the U.K. As Steve Martin once said- it’s like a whole other country other there. TV is different, in that it isn’t exactly commercial, you have to pay some sort of tax for it. This means that the British TV networks worked for the British Government. It seems there have been a few changes in the system, but I haven’t really kept up.
When we were there, lo these many years ago, TV seemed to be a random mix of old programs and new programs. During Prime Time you were just as likely to see a thirty year old re-run as new programing. The usual length of an old BBC series was something on the order of six episodes. The New Dr Who runs 13 episodes a season. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the game show that brought game shows back from the dead, was a British Game Show. So was The Weakest Link, and the upcoming Moment of Truth.
So all we need to do is start importing more shows from Great Britain.
Is there any job that can’t be outsourced? Given enough time and effort, I don’t think there is. So why should television writers be any different? If they don’t want to work, let them quit and hire someone that does. I should note that I am from Texas, and Union is very dirty word in these parts. Though clearly, my crappy job as portrait photogragher could only be improved by bringing in a union. This does not mean we will ever get one. None of us are irreplaceable, they tell us that as often as they can. And so it is with Screenwriters.
As a would be writer for most of my life, being a Screenwriter was always one of the impossible dream jobs. A first novel might make two grand for the newbie writer, a first screenplay could go for 50 grand. That’s a bit of a difference in pay grade. Not to mention that a novel could be a hundred thousand words, while a screenplay is seldom going to be more than 120 pages. As with the pilots who went on strike a few years ago and whined that they couldn’t get by on half a million dollars a year, it is hard for me to feel too sorry for screenwriters.
But then, I give my writing away. And it might be argued that it is not even worth that much. As with many people who have been watching TV their whole lives, I can predict, with a fair degree of certainly, how most TV shows will end within a few minutes of the opening lines. This doesn’t mean I don’t still watch them. Grey’s Anatomy is the most predictable show to hit the airwaves in twenty years, but it is still fun. We don’t really want all that originality. We would have to think and who needs that?
I’m a blogger, TV gives me the occasional something to blog about. But if there is no TV worth watching, I have no problem spending hours in front of the computer. I like reading other blogs, writing my own blog, and just generally having a bit of fun.
As a writer I should show solidarity with my fellow scribes. Who knows, I might make the jump to the Big Time one of these days. Of course, if the strike keeps going on, there will be no Big Time to jump to. I wonder if they are hiring at the BBC?
