TVSquad

Ah, product placement. It's a subject that's come up before. We have an award for it, and even as far back as those care free days of 2005, Karina was writing about the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild Of America protesting it. The telling quote from that piece, "Our writers are being told to perform the function of ad copywriter, but to disguise this as storytelling." And isn't that where most of us have always drawn the line in the sand? The placing of products into sets was kind of an understood cost of doing business, but having the writers change scripts to incorporate them was a whole other ball of (Turtle) wax. Unfortunately, those (Foster Farms) chickens have come home to roost.

This year's awards season, barely a month old now, has not been a good one for Hollywood. First, the Golden Globes ceremony was reduced to an Access Hollywood special after members of the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild boycotted the show. Now, it looks like the Grammy Awards ceremony may also be in trouble.

It is being reported that the striking guild will probably bar its members from working on the February 10th Grammys telecast. Grammy organizers have yet to ask for a waiver allowing for writers to work on the show. However, according to a WGA spokesperson, a waiver grant would be unlikely. There is no word if the WGA will picket the ceremony. If it does, then SAG members will not cross the picket line. This potentially means another exciting 1-hour infotainment special.

I'm sure members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are sweating a bit now.

As the strike lingers on and the Writers Guild of American (WGA) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) seem no closer to bridging their philosophical and monetary gap, the WGA is set to try a new tactic. According to Variety, the WGA is going to make a "legal demand" today for individual members of the AMPTP to schedule bargaining meetings with the WGA. However, at this point it isn't clear if the companies are legally obligated to do so, and if not, will they?

The Golden Globes weren't the only award nominations announced today. The Writers Guild of America announced the nominees for their awards too. The festivities are on February 9 in LA and NY. I wonder if the writers will show up to get their awards if the strike is still going on?

Drama Series

Dexter
Mad Men
Friday Night Lights
The Sopranos
The Wire

Just wanted to give you an update on the ongoing writers strike, before you head off to your glorious weekends of skiing, Christmas shopping, Naked Twister parties and whatever else you folks do on Saturdays and Sundays.

Talks broke off between producers and the writers on Friday, after four days of talks that at first seemed to be productive and then ... well, not so much. In fact, the Writers Guild of America sent out a letter Friday afternoon that pretty much said that the producers were dragging their heels in the talks and even accused them of trying to sabotage the talks. Of course, the Alliance of Motion Picture And Television Producers also sent out their own letter on Friday to explain their side.

As 2007 is about to turn into 2008, it really doesn't look like we're going to see that many new scripted shows for the rest of the season (besides what is already in the can and will be seen in January and February). This could last for months.

• The WGA-East declares that "Ellen DeGeneres Not Welcome in NY."
• Lost's co-creator Damon Lindelof announces, "Television is dying" in the New York Times.
• Some soap writers are crossing the picket line to resume work.
• Today (Tuesday) was dubbed "Picketing with the Stars" as 100 actors from 30 TV shows joined the picket line at Universal Studios in a show of solidarity.
• Seventeen entertainment blogs went dark for a day in support of the writer's strike.
• Peter Chernin (president of Fox's parent company, News Corp) bragged that the strike is "probably a positive" for the company as it will most likely save them money.
• CBS News is preparing for a possible strike by 500 of their news writers.
• The Simpson's Mr. Burns tells striking writers they can't have the internet: "It's Mine!"

This is getting serious.

Both sides are still far from agreement on a new deal, and a strike by the Writers Guild of America could start in a couple of weeks (the last offer was rejected by writers). That means that scripted shows (Lost and House, for example) and late night talk shows would suffer the most. Some shows have a schedule that means they won't be affected that much, like The Simpsons, but most other scripted shows will be hurt in some way. As for daytime, Martha Stewart wouldn't be affected at all, but The View uses union writers so that should could be hit. (The View uses writers? So that means a writer actually puts those words into Elisabeth Hasselbeck's mouth?)

Writing is one of the oddest professions. A lot of people just don't get what we do, why we do it, how we do it, or what we get paid. I've encountered countless numbers of people who think that I'm rich because I'm a writer and "that lady J.K. Rowling is a writer and she's rich!" or they think I shouldn't get paid that much because "writing is easy and fun" or some other sort of logic.

Brookes Barnes doesn't get it either. He has an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week about the latest negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP. TV and film writers want a piece of the DVD sales pie. Barnes seems to think that they're asking for too much because...well, I'll let Barnes explain it himself, in his opening paragraph: