Queue up your Tivo. Your favorite shows will be back soon.
Hooray, and let’s hope it works.
United Hollywood is reporting a similar thing. The impressing I have is that the strike is not OVER until the membership, as opposed to the guild leadership, has its say on the deal, but things look promising.
I wonder when they’ll be able to get new “Heroes” on the air by if this thing gets signed? 
September seems the earliest.
Remember that production on pretty much everything stopped months ago and February is the point at which most places are gearing up for the fall television season. Which doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for some shows to get back on the air sooner (I wouldn’t be shocked to see the new season turning up a few months early for some programs, for example), but an hour long drama like Heroes which requires a lot of production efforts isn’t going to be back any time soon.
I think there’ll be a race to the base for airing new episodes, and things will be rushed and possibly – hard to believe, in the TV world, but possibly – gasp – substandard.
You’re probably right about Heroes. It’s a complicated show with special effects and tight editing and, judging from the few episodes I’ve seen, really well written. I hope they do take until September and put out quality episodes (even though I’ve stopped watching – but that’s just because I can’t watch every week and got totally lost*)
*Which I also don’t watch, for the same reason.
What about Lost? Will they be able to continue and finish this season?
I’m fantasizing that Damon Lindelof has been secretly writing episodes 9-16 in his time off. And that his first day back in the office, he whips am out and the other writers are all like :mad: and the production crew is all like and the nextwork executives are all like :eek: and the cast is all like 
and damon is all like 
But I doubt it.
(bumpity bump) Yay!
Hmm… well, I don’t really know that much about it, but…
The writing stopped on 1st november of 2007. The last Heroes episode aired was about a month later, 3rd of December.
Would all the writing for the winter and spring run of a show happen from November-January usually? That doesn’t make so much sense to me. I think it’s probably true that February is the point at which they START to prepare for the fall season, as well as continuing prep for the May sweeps etcetera. I also suspect it’s quite likely that ongoing shows have some half-completed script ideas that were deemed unproduceable after the strike started, but don’t require that much work to get ready.
Of course, I’m not in the business, so this is what’s known as ‘talking out of your ass.’ But I do hope that my favorite shows like Heroes get some new episodes before next fall.
About Lost, this is according to Wikipedia:
“Season 4 was planned (prior to the the Writers Guild of America strike) to feature 16 episodes, to be broadcast in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada beginning in the U.S. and Canada on January 31, 2008 at 8/7c. If the writers’ strike ends before February 15, 2008, 4 to 6 episodes could be added to the 8 completed before, bringing the season up to 14 episodes.”
Paul
I’m not a television writer either (and there’s enough around here that I’m sure some will be along soon enough) so I’m just going by a few decades of being interested in the more technical side of Hollywood but my understanding of things is that there’s usually a few month lead time and February and March are when the fall season is really being worked on. Obviously different shows can do things differently and there probably are a few completed scripts sitting around that couldn’t get done when the strike interrupted everyone’s jobs.
That last episode that aired was probably finished in September just in time to take a hiatus for press tours. By October it was looking like a strike was coming and a lot of shows slowed things down so they wouldn’t be stuck with half completed work that they’ve paid for but can’t use until a writer gets back to help clean up some of the rough spots. So it’s not just a matter of the writers for Heroes sitting down, whipping out a script, and then their work is over with.
Actually it would be kind of interesting if the strike is the straw that breaks the camel’s back of traditional television seasons. The season has been a kind of hold over concept and I wouldn’t mind if now we see things more spread out. Some shows that can be produced quickly debuting in May, others that take more build up waiting until the summer, and so on.
It ain’t over until the plump broad warbles off key, but it looks good. After sitting in on a meeting this Friday and reading the tentative agreement memo, this scribe feels that the agreement is a pretty sound deal. It’s by no mans perfect, but some of the gains made are incredibly important.
What matters now is the opinion of the membership - it will determine what the executive will do from here. We could return to work as early as Monday, if the membership agrees that this deal is a good one and that we should go for it.
The question on every fan’s lips is: when will my favorite show be back on? The answer varies, but for your regular, 1 hour show, about 2 months after we get back to work.
How many episodes will we get to do before the end of the season? Probably about 6 of 7 , maybe more in some cases.
What about the “new shows”? Some will not get pick-up orders and some were already canned after their 12 or 13 episode orders of the early season. It looks like this includes Dirty Sexy Money and other successful shows. Networks felt they just didn’t have the momentum to carry through after the strike.
What about pilot season? We’re hoping to salvage it.
What about the Oscars? They will go on as scheduled.
What about your collective asses? We’ll be busting them to bring you your favorite shows back on the air as soon as we can, once the order is lifted. Right now, it’s really coming down to the wee hours.
I’ll be glad to answer questions – those that I can and am allowed to – if any one has any.
They may have been writing in private and scripts may be available quickly. Approval ,gathering cast and shooting will still take time. How many players have taken movie offers and other gigs they are committed to now.?
What about Saturday Night Live? If people go back to work on Monday, will there be a new show next weekend? I’m dying here without Weekend Update to tell me which political candidates to make fun of.
Do you agree with Lisa de Moraes’ analysis in the Washington Post of what the post-strike industry will look like?
Basically, she says that there’s going to be a big cutback in the network’s purchases of pilots; that the network is going to start ordering shows straight to air, and also get rid of overall deals, and of course, more reality shows and fewer scripted ones.
No teamed show has been writing, I can tell you that much. Some of us had drafts before we went on strike, but it will be at least 40 days or so before shows are ready to air.
There were plenty of scripts for features that were being shopped around, sure, and many of us continued working on our pet projects – as long as they were pet projects that were NOT already sold or optioned by struck companies.
Remember that this strike affected all the industry: television, movies, everything. Quite a few of us are committed to theatre gigs which WILL require us to double our workload here and there for a while.
We won’t be putting in crazy-insane-nutzoid hours, however (at least not more than usual – 14-16 hour days are pretty common) because we’re not going to try to salvage a 22 episode season. The studios are aiming to add about 6 to 8 episodes to what we have already produced. In some cases, that will actually complete a season for some shows. For others, it will bring the tally up to 20 or so.
In the case of Feature Films, they’re just going to go back to where they were when the strike hit and pick up where they left off. Some need to start running after their funding again, which is going to be a bitch of a task.
That’s a good question. Sketch comedy will probably return fairly quickly. Right now, it looks like we may be returning to work on Wednesday rather than Monday. If that’s the case, it may be another week out before SNL would return, but you never know
Unfortunately, I think she’s on the right track. We’re going to see more reality, less scripted shows – at least for Broadcast. The quality drama is going to be shifting to cable more and more. Reality is cheap to produce. Note that we didn’t get jurisdiction on reality and animation – we haven’t been able to protect those poor schmucks yet (health, pension, decent wages) but we hope to try again in 3 years.
You will see fewer pilots next season, that’s for sure. There’s just no time and no inclination - the studios don’t want to pick them up. There’s also been the nasty leaning towards the spin-off, formulaic procedural (the showverall) – and they’ve all done well for the networks – so why SHOULD they try something new, right?
You’ll see a lot more straight-to-air, less overalls, more reality – unfortunately, it seems to be what the masses like. The rest gets spread out across cable and does really well there. That’s where the future of “good drama” will be.
Daly Show needs help. How long for that show to get back to normal.?
-FrL-
Elenfair: Thanks for taking questions. Know how many more episodes the Lost writers will be able to squeeze out this season?