Writers Strike Continues (Jan 7, 2008)

For one night this week, Leno and Kimmel will appear on each other's show.

The swap comes Thursday, with Kimmel traveling to Leno's studio in Burbank, Calif., and Leno returning the favor in Hollywood. Both shows are taped on the same day they air.

Both of the talk show host's shows returned to the air Wednesday without writers due to the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America. David Letterman returned the same day with a deal with his productiion studio and the WGA writers. Because of Letterman, the Screen Actors Guild have asked its members to consider appearing on Letterman instead of Leno and Kimmel. With the actors reluctant to cross the picket lines to appear on the non-WGA approved shows, booking guests for Leno and Kimmel is a tough job to fill.

Leno's show featured comic Howie Mandel, host of NBC's "Deal or No Deal," on Thursday, with an animal expert, and and a comedian on Friday.

Without such booking problems, Letterman has lined up actors Tom Hanks, Lucy Liu and Morgan Freeman for shows this week.

Leno, host of "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno", is involved in a separate dispute with the writers union. The WGA insists that Leno, who is a WGA member, cannot write his own jokes and perform them in a monologue; Leno and NBC say the guild's own contract does allow this. The writers have threatened disciplinary action against Leno.

Considering the writer's strike dragging on into the third month, it will likely kill the upcoming fall TV season, like it's still important in my life, as well as delay production of the bulk of movies planned for release this year and the next. Prime-time is already full of reality shows, and it won't be long before the networks run out of fresh episodes of several dozen series to air.

Looking at the most recent Soap Opera Digest, a look at the ratings for the eight soaps are jaw-busting. Only the Miami Dolphins show hope of going up compared to this sad state. Somebody bring Bill Parcells in to shake up the soaps!

Five of the soaps are at 2.0 and less (with four tied at 1.9!) That was for the week of December 10th. The writers strike hasn't affected the production of the soaps yet, but there are reports that scabs are rewriting some of the scenes in "All My Children", suggesting that the soaps may be planning to use scab writers once the scripts authored by the WGA writers run out, rather than to shut down for months. This is one way of keeping the actors and non-union workers behind the studios working, but since the actors aren't in the same league as those who work in movies and prime-time teleivision, the soap actors are in no position to be taking trash and not showing up for work, so whether she likes it or not, Susan Lucci will act out the scripts written by the scabs like she did when the last WGA writers' strike happened in mid 1988.

How low will the ratings go before the networks announce some cancellations? The time to start upselling new shows to the networks and syndicators is near if not happening already, and stations want to get some hours of soaps replaced with new programming that could help them get bigger ratings, as they can't live on ratings like the teens that four of the soaps may be getting more often in 2008. The writers strike could seriously force the network programmers to start taking the bull by the horns and exercise come creative control over their daytime schedules to head off a potential catastrophe that may be coming in the months ahead. The schedules can't stay that way forever; something has to change and soon to bring in some new viewers, both younger than the desired demo, and older. Just sticking to the 18-49 demos isn't going to cut it in the long run.

When will we get to see fresh new episodes of "Heroes?" One good side effect of the strike: no more episodes of "According To Jim!"