WGA Strike Nears Its End?

According to a few sources it looks like the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) are going to start holding informal talks again today. This is great news and may save next season’s television season after all. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the WGA has agreed to drop their demand that Reality Show Writers and Animation Show Writers be unionized by the latest deal. (link) They have decided to try and organize those two groups of writers another way than including it in their collective bargaining agreement with the AMPTP.


What’s most shocking about this statement is the fact that both the WGA and AMPTP are both admitting that reality television has writers! Doesn’t this go against everything the term reality television stands for!?! I’m hoping this latest revelation will spark a movement to change the term from reality television to either: a partially scripted show, a quasi-reality show or a half-written show. These terms haven’t been perfected yet, so I’d be happy to take some suggestions for a new term for professionally written reality television shows.


There have been some other reports that because the AMPTP and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) agreed upon a new collective bargaining agreement last week that the argument between the WGA and the AMPTP has effectively been settled. I can’t even begin to try and explain why this is the case, so instead I’ll direct to you to a recent blog post on a great blog I read quite often, Notes From A Hack by Irwin Handleman. Irwin Handleman is a professional comedy writer and also a pen name, I think. If not then he just happens to share his name with a character from one of my favorite television shows of all time, Skippy from Family Ties. You can read his explanation for why the strike will end soon here.