A labor strike in my view is serious business. When workers leave their jobs and face the uncertainty of a period of time when they are not bringing home a paycheck to their families then I automatically think there are issues surrounding the action that are significant.
Over the years however, I have come to view some strikes with more sympathy than others. It is much easier to side with miners and agricultural workers than it is to side with baseball and hockey players.
In the last two instances of major sports strikes, the actions came back to haunt the strikers since it was years before the two industries returned to any semblance of their former prominence. In fact in the case of hockey, the damage done by the strike (or lockout depending or your side of the issue) is still being felt.
Just such a scenario might be developing in Hollywood over the writer's strike. The last strike was in 1988 and lasted a total of 22 weeks. A lot has happened since 1988 and most of it does not bode well for the writers or the studios. There are a lot more competing interests for viewers these days and many of those choices do not include unionized writers or Hollywood studios.
Cable in general and the web in particular have been grabbing off more and more of the the customers available viewing hours and that is likely to increase if an extended run of repeats is all that network TV is likely to offer.
As in any action, there is always the law of unintended consequences. The consequences for the writers and for Hollywood in general is that viewers may find that a few extra hours with a good book or a hobby or even quality time with the family might be a significantly more enjoyable couple of hours than that same time spent in front of the benign time waster called television.
Back a number of years ago I made a vow that under no circumstances would I spend any time in front of the television watching programs having anything to do with cops, doctors or lawyers. My thinking was that everything in those categories have been done and over done. There are only so many times you can see an actor trying to do his imitation of Jack Webb of Dragnet fame.
The end result is that I have substituted a number of very enjoyable pursuits in place of sitting on the sofa watching network TV. The writers and the studios better get this over quick so that TV watching Americans don't look for more interesting and personally productive alternatives.
