INSIDE THE BOX | Strike Watch: The beginning

Last November, an essay I wrote at the outset of the strike was included in the Cynopsis Weekender College Edition. In observance of last week’s end to the strike, I post my winning essay on the Manifesto for the first time.

Strike Strategies Take Center Stage as Everyone Settles in for The Long Haul
By Pat Howard, Senior/University of North Alabama, Major: English – Professional Writing

The studios, the writers, the media and even viewers seem to be gearing up for a lengthy strike. There’s already been talk of the major networks reaching into their cable stables and cherry-picking popular programs to pad out prime time once the short supply of fresh scripted programming is finally exhausted.

But they would do well to borrow more than repurposed programs from their cable cousins. There are also some valuable programming strategies to be mined. For example, MTV’s gay-oriented network Logo knows how to make its programming stretch.

In recent months, Logo has run encore seasons of some of its original series, including Noah’s Arc and The Big Gay Sketch Show. These reruns are dressed up with bonus material such as deleted scenes, an incentive for viewers to watch old episodes again.

NBC employed a similar tactic with reruns of The Office this summer, but in that case the repurposed material was coordinated by some of the producers and writers who have now shut down The Office to support the strike.

Comedy Central may be on to something with its rumored plan for theme rerun weeks of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Such gimmicks may be akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but a strategy – any strategy – is better than doing nothing and simply letting viewers wander away.

Ultimately, the sad irony of this strike is that, unless programmers figure out a way to retain eyeballs despite a dearth of quality scripted fare, they’ll be driving viewers into the very arms of the technologies they claim are so difficult to monetize.

If this strike drags on, and we have every indication that it will, the reality is that we’ll soon be left with the picked-over carcass of the 2007-2008 television season. Viewers will go elsewhere for their fix, sampling more shows online or catching up on programs they’ve missed by shelling out for DVDs. By holding out for their piece of the pie, writers may be unintentionally furthering the system they claim is treating them so unfairly.

COMING | My post-strike analysis