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American Morning

Possible Writers Guild Strike Nearing

Aired May 01, 2001 - 09:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with a Hollywood cliffhanger we've been talking about behind the scenes here. Not a movie this time around. It's a labor dispute with millions of dollars and thousands of jobs and TV and movie production on the line here.

CNN's Sherri Sylvester joins us now from Los Angeles. She's got the latest for us now on efforts to avoid a strike by Hollywood writers -- Sherri, good morning.

SHERRI SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

Well, as you said, at midnight tonight, the contracts for 11,000 members of the WGA, the Writers Guild of America, do expire.

We don't know how negotiations are going because they do have a news blackout while talks are underway. We do know that you can expect a picket line right away because they would have to take a strike to a vote of the entire membership and decide whether to walkout.

How will this affect you? That's the most important question. First of all, you would see the effects of the strike in late night and daytime. David Letterman and Jay Leno -- their own personal contracts allow them to write some of their material, but they are staffed with WGA members.

Jay Leno has said to "The Daily Variety," the trade paper out here, that he would not willing to cross picket lines to do the show. So, for a first time in a long time, you may be seeing a lot of reruns of "Letterman" and "Leno," and Jay Leon's even been joking about the strike in his late-night monologue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE TONIGHT SHOW")

JAY LENO, HOST: If the strike went for five months -- "E.R." is forced to run repeats every week instead of every other week.

Six months -- six months is bad. If it's six months, Stone Phillips collapses from the pressure of doing 17 "Datelines" a week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SYLVESTER: That's right. The networks are planning on a lot of reality programming, which is strike proof, and a lot of newsmagazine shows, which are also strike proof.

We do want to talk to you, too, about the soap operas. There are 10 hours of soap operas on the air currently -- or 10 soap operas that are run on daytime. Now they're banked for about two weeks ahead. They plan their plot lines well in advance, though.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LYNN LEAHEY, "SOAP OPERA DIGEST": As long as the strike doesn't go on for too long, if it's a matter of weeks, creatively, daytime will be OK. If it goes on for months, we're in big, big trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SYLVESTER: And, Leon, we can tell you, as far as prime-time goes, most of those shows are already finished for this season. So this could fall at a fairly good time.

I mean, you haven't seen the final "Friends," the season finale, but it's already in the can. It's been banked for a while. This is the time of year that most of the sitcoms and the dramas are already wrapped. They go on hiatus. The writers come back midsummer usually to start preparing for the fall.

Now the strike in '88 -- the writers strike lasted five months -- that delayed the start of the fall season until November. Feature films -- it's going to be a long time before you see the effects of a strike because the studios and the stars have been working back to back to back to back to make as many films as they can.

Of course, they've kind of blown their budgets for the year doing that. But there are plenty of movies to come to the theaters this summer and into fall.

HARRIS: Well, Sherri, how about the networks? Is any one particular network in worse position at this particular point because of all this, or are they all going to start shooting for more of these shows -- the real action shows like the "Survivor"s in order to get around this kind of problem?

SYLVESTER: Well, ABC, of course, is in very good shape because they run "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" several nights a week, and they only have about seven hours of prime-time programming in their entire scheduled because they've gotten into this reality game.

What you see is a lot of the networks have been preparing for a long time for the possibility of a strike. So you're going to see another "Mole." You're going to see another version of the "Big" -- you know, "Big Brother." You're going to see "Survivor" again. They're already planning that.

The interesting thing to me is that a lot of the networks say that they have already spent their budget for the year -- you know, for most of the entire year by this spring just to prepare. They've also ordered up a lot of shows that might have been a mid-season replacement. Maybe they saw a pilot this spring. They went ahead and ordered maybe 13 episodes of a show that you've never heard of, and they're keeping it on the bench so that, if the fall season is delayed, they can throw on that new sitcom or that drama that you don't even know anything about just to bide a little bit of time.

HARRIS: Well, Sherri, as early as we have to go to bed on this schedule, there's a lot of shows we have never heard of before that are out there. What about the big movie releases, the blockbusters? What about them? How are they going to be affected by all this?

SYLVESTER: Well, the interesting thing is that the summer movie season is finished. You know, the films have quite a long lead time. If there is a Screen Actors' Guild strike, that could affect summer box office because the actors' contract would prevent them from doing publicity.

So there is a possibility that you could have these multimillion- dollar summer films with no interviews and no press being done by those actors. So a combination -- you know, a writers and actors strike combo would be pretty devastating.

But, right now, the actors are all working, you know, around the clock to make as many movies as they can, you know, to get them all finished so that we'll have films staggered and released through summer, fall, and even into the winter.

HARRIS: Understood. Sherri Sylvester reporting live this morning from the streets of Los Angeles. Thanks much. We will see you later on.

Also, we expect to see later on the mayor of Los Angeles. We'll have Richard Riordan. He is going to have something to say quite -- I'm sure about what this is going to mean for the economy in his city. So make sure you stick around. He'll be with us in just a few minutes -- Daryn.

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