Kate Bulkley, Media Analyst.

Media Money:The impact of the US writers strike & Investing in Talent

By Kate Bulkley

Broadcast News

For Broadcast November 7, 2007

Kate Bulkley on the problems that the UK faces because of a dispute between writers and studios in the USA.

Writers on strike in the US

Writers on strike in the US

So the pen is mighty after all. Maybe the sword can lop off a few heads, but TV's pen pushers are causing execs to lose their heads in a different way. The long-predicted Writers' Guild of America strike started at the weekend and the consequences of a long, drawn-out dispute are almost unfathomable.

Hit shows such as Lost, 24, Prison Break and The Riches are stuck in series limbo while writers take to the streets.

The networks have been banking scripts of these shows for months (Lost reportedly has 10 episodes waiting to be shot; Prison Break is 13 eps up), so the walk-out isn't likely to hit the UK until a few months into next year. But who wants to start watching Jack Bauer if, a few months in, the show starts to seem more like 72 hours, rather than 24?

The impact on US networks will be more closely mirrored in the UK now the biggest US shows come here within three days of their US TX, rather than the three to six months of the pre-Bit Torrent world.

But the strike is also an opportunity for UK programme-makers, who are receiving begging phone calls from US networks for non-scripted shows that can go west.

The search for the next Pop Idol just ratcheted up and celebrity-heavy competition shows like Cirque de Celebrite look even more attractive.

The strike centres on writers' percentage from downloads and on-demand video watching, and uncertainty about its dur-ation is a major problem.

Key decisions are already being made. BBC2 is looking smart to have delayed the start of the second series of Heroes to January; a proposed spin-off of the same show has been dropped by NBC because the network can't be sure when the scripts might be written.

Sky One primetimer Journeyman is starting this week with break points written into the scripts so that viewers might hang on to the show if it disappears for a while.

Who would have thought the writing community could cause such a disastrous situation? Even scriptwriters could never have come up with this scenario.

How does an investment in talent pay off? It's a smart move for Talkback

The Hollywood studio system has long been in the business of nurturing talented individuals by housing them on studio backlots and signing long-term contracts to make sure they always play for the home team.

Now Talkback Thames is taking a leaf out of the Hollywood handbook and using part of a new 28m investment fund to house The IT Crowd comedy writer Graham Linehan in its offices and invest in the indie belonging to Waking the Dead's Trevor Eve.

The move by Lorraine Heggessey is a canny one. She gets first dibs on whatever Eve comes up with next -and the new media rights to exploit it, one assumes and he gets a bit of cash and security (something all actors like, even if they don't say so out loud).

Heggessey isn't the only one doing the "invest and prosper" two-step. In her first public speech as ITV's new global content supremo, Dawn Airey talked about creating individual brand managers for big ITV shows and says she has 200m for an indie "shopping spree".

Beyond this, Airey is keen to reverse the tide of talented producers who have left ITV Productions (Andy Harries comes to mind) and plans to be "more flexible" in the way ITVP "engages with talent".

Good move. Although channel brands are still important, fragmentation of viewing continues: expect the "programme as brand" era to be quickly followed by a "talent as brand" one.

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