South Park: Not Bigger, Not Longer, but Unstruck

I know this may be way out of your area, but how the heck has Hollywood not been able to shake the union system yet. Especially with the rather shocking decline of unionized employees in the US. Is it that members of the various guilds refuse to work with non-union employees in the various other specialties? I'd figure there's enough people out there that want in the business and have enough talent that someone would have been able to set up a non-union top to bottom production house.

I know it'd be hard to get up to speed on a weekly television series, but there's got to be enough comics out there willing to get a good enough paycheck to write jokes for the late night variety shows. Are there any "scabs" in the entertainment business?

Hey Gerik...

It's really really really hard to write for something that happens week after week after week (or worse daily)...and still be fresh and interesting.

Hell...that why's so many shows (like Big Bang suck).

It's takes an extremely creative mind to do that. You need to be naturally that way or have learned to do it. That means there's only a limited number of people. I'd band together with others to get myself some great negotiating power.

Gerik,

Short answer is -- trying not to wade out of my depth here -- if you aspire to write jokes for TV, then you really aspire to write jokes for union TV shows, and scabbing would be a great way to ensure you never do that.

I figured it was the want of a job post strike that would ensure people didn't cross the picket line. It just seemed odd to me that, from what I've read over the past week, animation writers seem to be majority non-union. If they haven't had much success there (other than Fox), I figured there'd be at least a few live action shows that ended up non-union by now. Thanks for the insight.

One more thing--there is an animation union separate from the WGA; I suppose I should use the term "non-guild" instead.

Ah thanks for that, after I posted I started searching around and noticed that too. Anyway interesting discussion.

Part of the reason that Hollywood hasn't been able to, as you say, shake the union system (not that I think that's a bad thing at all) is that it just doesn't make that much sense for writers to go non-union.

As it is, they make very little off their work (I've seen figures that put current DVD residuals at 0.03%; that's tiny..). If they don't protect their IP through a union, it would be very easy for the corporations that are movie and television studios to simply cut them off.

Also, IIRC, a lot of writers don't work full time writing jobs. They float from show to show, script to script. There may be weeks or months where they don't actually have a job. During this time, its the residuals that they live on. Not what I'd want to do with my life, but then I'm not a big writing fan.

If you want to know more I know there a lot of really good sources out there, especially some of the writers. My personal favorite is John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey. He doesn't have the most indepth analysis, but it's pretting insightful.

okay, I'm ready to bet that next week's South Park will be about the writers strike, with the boys freaking out about having to watch reruns of Terence and Philip....until it turns out that T&P aren't a union show...

then they find out its the last T&P of the season.

@p_luk: from your fingertips to God's ears.

Good answer, James.