STRIKE!

So last week the Screen Actors Guild declared the tens of thousands of actors under the guild would go on strike. 

After weeks of discussions and bargaining, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) were no closer to anything resembling a consensus. 

The president of SAG-AFTRA is Fran Drescher (yes, THAT Fran Drescher, star of The Nanny!) who vented her frustration with the studio bosses.  

“I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.   I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting.  Shame on them.”

Drescher connected the actors strike to threats to all labor from  emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble.  We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines, and big business who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family.”

Basically anybody who does anything for a living has to deal with the existential threat of being replaced by technology. If something as fundamentally human as creative endeavor can be replaced with computers, what hope is there for any of us? 

The writer's guild (WGA) is also still on strike with the same concerns as actors, the payment of residuals in a post TV/cable world dominated by streaming. And being replaced by artificial intelligence. 

Walking the picket line for WGA, Adam Conover posted on Tik Tok that a studio boss said the quiet part out loud, that producers would stall until October when the strikers would be starved and desperate to take any deal.  Conover was defiant and said the guild was ready for the long haul.   

The antiquated and decaying institution of network television may well be starved and desperate come October. Primetime line ups consumed with reality and game shows and stale reruns. And what about the late night shows like Colbert and Kimmel who rely on being fresh and topical? All those shows have been in perpetual reruns since May. 

I really miss getting my Closer Look with Seth Meyers.   

Network television was already withering on the vine. Bereft of new dramas, comedies and talk shows, the death knell of network television will only ring louder and closer.  

Meanwhile writers and actors are looking for what any of us are looking for, a chance to make a living and provide for a future in that profession.  

AMPTP seems to think that's too much to ask for and thus writers and actors are where they are. 

Let's end this post on a lighter note, remembering when Fran Drescher's biggest concern was Fran Fine's wardrobe on The Nanny.