Writers’ strike: Woohoo!
Strikes, apart from their usefulness as negotiating tactics, tend to hurt all parties involved. Writers will have to live without pay, on what is already a pretty marginal income for the vast majority. Studios, obviously, will be hit hard as scripts are used up — TV studios in the short term, and possibly even film studios in the long term, if the strike lasts more than a couple months. Viewers, too: it will be a long season of reruns and reality shows if the strike drags on, and a dearth of good new stuff next season as this year’s “pilot season” — the annual round of writing and producing pilots for consideration for the Fall 2008 season — is quashed by the strike.
Everybody loses, right? Well, not exactly. The web wins.
If the TV season sucks, that will mean that viewers spend less time in front of the set, and instead hit the other glowing box in the house to spend their time. More significantly, though, TV advertising will be less effective as it reaches fewer viewers. All those huge advertising budgets won’t go to waste, of course — they’ll be redirected to other outlets. E.g., the web.
We’re not even just talking commercials. Consider film studios. A huge venue for advertising new releases is the talk-show circuit, as the stars hit one after the other to promote their new films. Well, you’ll notice that talk shows, with their day-long write/shoot/air schedules, will be the first to disappear from the airwaves. So how to promote new movies? That’s right: the web, again.
Advertising dollars are going to get a nice little shot in the arm. Buy GOOG.
All this, of course, is the short and medium term. In the long term, this could hurt the entire TV and film industry enough to help topple what’s already a threatened distribution mechanism under fire from digital distribution technology. Once again, the web wins.
Good thing there isn’t a software engineers’ or HTML designers’ union, eh?