Because TV involves unionized people, and unionized people sometimes go on strike. When the Writers Guild of America (WGA)note goes on strike, this largely shuts down the Hollywood process, since writers are needed for script rewrites on-set and act-er, teamsters aren't keen to cross picket lines (in fact, they have it in their contract that they're immune to punishment should they honor any picket line). Strikes come as a result of bargaining falling apart with management, as represented by the AMPTP. As a result, a lot of shows hit by the strike may suffer through having a large batch of their unproduced scripts and stories slashed. They also tend to result in the proliferation of Talk Shows and Reality TV, since both require no writers and are dirt-cheap to produce compared to, say, Prime Time Soaps.
Strikes affect movies too, but the effects are a lot easier to notice for TV.
American strikes:
Disney's animators joined the Screen Cartoonists' Guild and went on strike on May 29 for the profit promised from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (which many animators took unpaid overtime to complete) and in response to the firing of prominent lead animator Art Babbitt for joining the Guild. Six weeks later, a federal mediator found in favor of the Guild, and "The Mouse Factory" has been a union joint ever since.
It’s been rumored that the nasty, drunken clowns from Dumbo (which was in production during the strike) who decide to "hit the big boss for a raise" are a Take That! at the striking animators.
1960 WGA/SAG Strike
January 16–June 10. The writers got the studios to pay into the WGA health and pension funds. Film writers got bigger residuals, and television writers got their wages doubled.
During the writers' strike, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike as well. This one only lasted six weeks, and is notable for having been led by then-SAG President Ronald Reagan, of all people — which becomes Hilarious in Hindsight given Reagan's later fame as a champion of the free market and opponent of labor unions while President of the United States.
1973 WGA Strike
This strike ran from March 6-June 24 and was one of many factors behind the Troubled Production of The Starlost.
1978 Animation Guild Strike
Went on strike over runaway production (studios started outsourcing animation to lower-wage countries). Led to a new clause where studios had to employ a certain number of employees before they could subcontract. The Guild lost this protection in the 1983 strike (see below).
1980 Hollywood Actors’ Strike
Most notable for the fact that Dallas had recently aired its famous "Who shot J.R.?" season-ending cliffhanger, and the strike meant viewers had to wait five months rather than three to find out who the shooter had been. Extra-strong measures were taken to prevent the solution from leaking, including filming shots of just about every member of the cast and crew, including J.R. himself, pulling the trigger.
The strike is also considered to have contributed to the box office failure of Somewhere in Time. The fact that Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour couldn't promote the film exacerbated the problem of it already receiving Invisible Advertising. It would later become a cult classic.
1981 WGA Strike
This three-month strike was to establish compensation for pay TV and home video and ended positively for the writers, although much of the gains were undone in 1985(see below). The strike cut short the infamous sixth season of Saturday Night Live just one episode after Dick Ebersol took over for Jean Doumanian as executive producer.
1983 Animation Guild Strike
Lasted 10 weeks. Again, the Guild fought over the runaway clause (see 1978). They lost because, well, the studios subcontracted to overseas studios and also to companies in other counties and states (and thus outside of the Guild’s jurisdiction).
The final nail in the coffin was on the ninth week, when Disney animators decided to take "financial core" statusnote and return to work. The Guild lost all hope and called off the strike, losing the "runaway" clause in the process.
1985 WGA Strike
A two-week strike that ended badly for the unions, forcing them to take a terrible residual/royalty on VHS sales, a low number that has had far-reaching effects with the advent of DVD and downloads. This ultimately culminated in the 2007–08 WGA Strike, below.
1987 Directors' Strike
This strike only lasted three hours and five minutes.
This one is the WGA's longest strike (March 7–August 8), over reduced residuals for hour-long series and foreign reruns.
- The biggest event resulting from this strike was that it marked the beginning of the end of the daytime Soap Opera in America. When this happened, the soaps were left without their most experienced writers, and the quality of the shows nosedived as the networks brought in inexperienced nonunion writers who often weren’t familiar with the material. Even after the old writers came back, the damage done by five months of crappy writing was catastrophic. The soaps were still recovering when, in 1995, there came the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which not only knocked the soaps completely off the air for weeks, but provided viewers with a real-life soap opera to enjoy. Daytime soaps, which were once ratings juggernauts, never recovered, and as of now the few daytime soaps that haven't been canceled yet (with decades-long runs) face the risk of it.
- The ends of Moonlighting and Kate & Allie are attributed to the strike.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was forced to go into production with an unfinished script. As Roger Ebert noted in his review, Star Trek V "betrays all the signs of having gone into production at a point where the script doctoring should have begun in earnest," which is indeed exactly what happened.
- Season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation got through the strike by using a Clip Show ("Shades of Gray") and some previously-written scripts for the abandoned 1977 Star Trek: Phase II series. "The Child," for instance, was originally a Phase II script about Lt. Ilia getting impregnated by an alien entity, and it was reworked into a TNG episode about Troi getting impregnated by an alien entity. The season still ended up being four episodes shorter than usual, but this was mitigated by a special airing of the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
- FOX bought COPS, being a reality show that didn’t require writers (but see above), and it became a very successful long-running show which mothered the genre of Reality Television. America's Most Wanted also found its stride during the strike.
- Small Wonder had an episode about a strike at Ted's company.
- CBS reran non-holiday-related Peanuts animated specials to help plug holes in primetime, to the point that TV Guide pointed the tactic out in a highlights listing.
- The Simpsons gave a Shout-Out to this strike in "Last Exit to Springfield" where Homer recalls the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant strike of '88.
- A Bloom County Sunday strip acknowledged the strike. It ran an old strip presumably rewritten by a scab writer, with the new dialogue being anti-union.
- Michael G. Wilson had to finish the script for Licence to Kill as the strike precluded Richard Maibaum from working on it.
- Sam Hamm handed in the script to Batman (1989) only days before the strike started. Due to the strike he could not do any rewrites (British writers were hired instead) and many things were changed from his screenplay of which he disapproved.
- Alan B. McElroy had only 11 days to come up with the story and write the screenplay for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, which he handed in hours before the strike starting.
- Probe aired the first episode on the same day the strike began, getting cut after two months.
- Two of the last three episodes of Max Headroom, which did not get to air before it was cancelled in October 1987, were aired by ABC as filler during the strike. The third one did not air until Bravo ran it in 1995.
- Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was co-written by one Manuel Fidello, a pseudonym for a scab writer who crossed the picket lines to work on the film. As admitting to doing this would be grounds for instant expulsion from the WGA even now, their identity will likely never be known.
- All of the shows DiC Entertainment were working on as the strike was occurring weren't affected as DiC was, at the time, very anti-union, and thus did not have to deal with having to hire scab writers. It also helps that DiC is primarily an animation studio, their only shows which would have been affected by the strike would have been I'm Telling! and Hey Vern, It's Ernest!.
- The 1988-90 revival series of Mission: Impossible was filmed in Australia - one of the first American series to be so - initially with reused and updated scripts from the original 1966-73 series. Later episodes used original scripts after the WGA strike ended.
- Gilda Radner was supposed to host Saturday Night Live for the 13th season (1987-88) finale on May 14, 1988, which would have made her the first female former castmember to host SNL (the musical guest would have been U2). Due to the strike, the season was forced to end after the February 27, 1988 episode (hosted by Judge Reinhold with musical guest 10,000 Maniacs). Sadly, less than a year later, her ovarian cancer returned and she passed away on May 20, 1989, the same day as the SNL season 14 (1988-89) finale. It wasn't till Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosted the penultimate episode of season 31 (2005-06) on May 13, 2006 that a female former castmember came back as a host, and U2 would appear as the musical guest in season 26 (2000-01) on December 9, 2000. The strike also resulted in the longest gap between episodes in SNL history, with the season 14 premiere airing 32 weeks after the season 13 finale.
In 2007, unhappy over low royalties for DVDs, and low or no residuals for Internet distribution of shows and for Internet-only broadcasts, the WGA went on strike from November 12, 2007 to February 5, 2008. The strike was concluded with a deal that granted or increased some Internet residuals, while not affecting DVDs. In retrospect, most analysts view the final deal as having been a defeat for the WGA, and this result would inform their resolve the next time they went on strike, 15 years later.
The strike was also the first of its kind to take place in the era of the Internet. As a result, writers had a more direct line of communication with fans/the general public, which led to unprecedented public support. When Joss Whedon announced a "Meet Joss Whedon" day on the picket lines, fans streamed in from as far away as Australia.
- 24, with only eight episodes in the can before the strike, decided that an incomplete season would not be a good thing and delayed Season 7 until January 2009. A two-hour Made-for-TV Movie aired November 2008 to fill the gap.
- This also meant that Kiefer Sutherland, who pleaded no contest to his second DUI charge, got to serve his 48-day jail sentence in one go. He’d planned to do it in two stints, during the production gaps.
- 30 Rock is an interesting case since the series is about the production of a Show Within a Show and several of the regular characters (including the protagonist) are writers. Per Word of God, the strike didn’t happen in the 30 Rock universe. Episode 210 went out without a formal title, the script having been turned in a couple of days before the strike began.
- Bionic Woman got eight episodes done, but was then axed during it.
- Journeyman had all 13 of its episodes written before the strike, and was cancelled for low ratings; the strike is probably responsible for all 13 episodes actually making it to air rather than being DVD-only.
- CSI had a 24-episode run cut to 17 and CSI: NY to 21.
- For UK viewers, this resulted in a) sudden gaps of a couple of weeks to avoid catching up on the first and third (CSI: Miami airs after the other two) and b) the situation where UK viewers ended up mere days behind their US counterparts, resulting in Preview Tapes Not Available being stated because the actual episodes had yet to even air when the Radio Times went to press.
- Smallville had its seventh season cut from 22 episodes to 20, with the last five episodes being written after the strike ended.
- South Park carried on and bashed the strike in the episode "Canada on Strike", in which the World Canadian Bureau (WGA) encourages Canadians to strike for "more money". Many animated programs, including South Park, were written under a different union than the WGA. (IATSE covers the writers on most animated series. This is a point of contention between the WGA and IATSE.)
- Family Guy was one of the hardest-hit series during the strike, resulting in two episodes being screened without Seth MacFarlane’s permission, the sixth season ending with only 12 episodes, and the entirety of the seventh broadcast season consisting of episodes held over from the sixth season. American Dad! went a little better, with the third season consisting of 16 episodes.
- The second season of Heroes was also cut from 24 episodes to 11 (more than half a season's worth of episodes), with the final episode of what was supposed to be the first arc hastily altered to wrap up the season. The planned spinoff Heroes: Origins was never produced. The idea that Volume 2 went "slow" (when it was being planned out for a 24-episode season) likely resulted in the rapid pacing and constant plot shifts of Volume 3.
- When the producers of Lost set an end date for the show, the final three seasons were originally planned to have 16 episodes each. The fourth season was supposed to have the episodes all aired in a row, but the strike cut it down to 13 episodes with a month-long break between episodes 8 and 9, although the script for the finale was long enough that the season was later extended to 14 episodes. As well, to make up for the lost episodes, Seasons 5 and 6 were extended to 17 episodes each (with Season 6 later being pushed up to 18).
- Season 4 of NUMB3RS got shortened from 24 episodes to 18 episodes.
- The Angels & Demons adaptation was delayed by a few months.
- ER and Scrubs, both scheduled to end during the 2007–08 season, were extended one more season to have a proper sendoff (with Scrubs channel-hopping to ABC to do it).
- Supernatural had its normal 22 episodes cut down to 16 for the third season, with the last few episodes time-jumping through how long Dean had left until his deal was up.
- A few shows got lucky. The strike almost exactly coincided with the time the writers of Burn Notice were supposed to be taking a break anyway, and USA actually ordered more episodes for Season 2 than had been planned pre-strike.
- The Stargate-verse was unaffected: Stargate Atlantis is produced in Canada and had wrapped filming before the strike started anyway.
- The late-night talk shows went on hiatus for the first couple of months, but returned in January rather than lay off the non-striking production staff. Notably, David Letterman negotiated a special deal with the WGA to let both The Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson return with their full writing staff; the others (including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report) relied on non-scripted material for the duration of the strike (during this time, Stephen Colbert referred to his show as The Colbert Report, with hard T's at the end, rather than silent T's). This led to crossover episodes between TDS, TCR and Late Night, culminating in a fake fight between Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Conan O'Brien.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ended abruptly without really ending the season; on the other hand, since it was used as a midseason replacement, the absence of competitors may have helped it gain an audience. It was renewed for another season.
- Joss Whedon got bored and wrote Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Dollhouse had its development put on hold as a result.
- Brothers & Sisters went through a couple of large time-jumps plot-wise.
- Warner Bros.’ lack of a solid summer blockbuster for 2009 meant Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was moved back to fill that slot (The Dark Knight did so well that they weren’t worried about having a successful '08 without it), and Twilight moved up a month to fill its slot. The announcement that Harry Potter was being moved came after the TimeWarner-owned magazine Entertainment Weekly gave that film the cover of its Fall Preview issue, leaving EW with egg on its face.
- Pushing Daisies was a clear casualty: the strike hit nine episodes into Season 1, and ABC decided not to bring it back in the spring (like every other show brought back after the strike). Waiting until the next TV season resulted in it being off the air for almost a year, and proved to have sapped its audience beyond recovery.
- Some shows that were to air over the summer were rushed out a few months early to compensate for the strike. Hell's Kitchen aired in April instead of June.
- Battlestar Galactica was halted mid-season, and Earth, which was supposedly to be shown in the next-to-last episode, ended up appearing in the midseason finale.
- In addition, because the writers knew that the show would end at that point if the strike went south, "Sometimes a Great Notion" was written in a way to resemble something of a series finale. An understandable effort that ended up undermining the show as a whole when the strike ended and the series went on, forcing the writers to restart and end the story in the space of 11 episodes. This resulted with the "show-ending arcs" (Fleet slowly dying out, the Cylon Civil War, etc.) being squeezed beyond recognition and was the source of some of the more controversial elements of the last 11 episodes.
- Bones’ third season was cut to 15 episodes, and the season-long serial killer Story Arc was given a problematic ending.
- Michael Bay supposedly wrote much of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen while Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were on strike.
- The script for Quantum of Solace was finished two hours before the strike commenced and some filming took place with Daniel Craig having to work on the script with the director.
- Greek’s first season was halted after 10 episodes. These episodes were then compiled as "Chapter One," and the rest of the season as “Chapter Two.” Because of this, the later seasons were also divided into chapters.
- The season division strategy unexpectedly started by Greek is now used by most ABC Family dramas to make spreading production costs out easier and to keep buzz percolating through the summer and into the winter, where ABC Family takes advantage of The CW's winter hiatuses between November and February to air the second half of a season.
- Las Vegas was cancelled on a Cliffhanger that was never even intended as a season ender.
- Because Britain and Australia (and presumably other countries as well) ended up with less American content than they were expecting, some channels relaunched old shows, leading to a new season of both local versions of Gladiators and the reboot of Good News Week.
- Dirty Sexy Money had been rising as a "guilty pleasure" show but went on a hiatus that lasted until the following fall. During that time, a showrunner turnover altered the show's fun vibe into a more "soap opera" aspect and the second season was seen as a serious comedown in quality, leading to its cancellation.
- When the writers for Power Rangers went on strike, Disney went ahead and hired scab writers to finish most of Power Rangers Jungle Fury with the WGA writers returning with four episodes remaining to write. It actually worked out fairly well as Jungle Fury is (at least) seen as a step back in the right direction after years of declining quality.
- Eastbound & Down had only just finished work on its pilot episode when the strike hit, meaning the rest of the first season wasn’t made until late 2008 and the show itself didn’t air until early 2009. The effect of this hiatus is only really noticeable in the changed appearances of Dustin’s kids, though, since their actors had obviously grown more in the year off.
- Attributed to the cancellation of Just Jordan, due to it being the only Nickelodeon original show at the time to feature WGA writers.
- The long-running sitcom Girlfriends was Cut Short due to the strike, and the CW couldn’t afford to give them a series finale.
- Breaking Bad had its first season cut off after seven episodes, with no chance to rework the last one into season finale material. Though this ended up working out for the best, as Jesse Pinkman would have been killed had it gone a full season, and instead Vince Gilligan had time to rework his plans for the show after it became clear how popular he was.
- Saturday Night Live:
- The strike occurred during season 33 (2007-08), and the show went on hiatus after the November 3, 2007 episode and came back on February 23, 2008, and thus, this season had only 12 episodes rather than the usual 20, making it the shortest season in SNL history, beating both season 6 (1980-81) and season 13 (1987-88), which were both shortened to 13 episodes (both also due to writers' strikes). Also thanks to this strike, this is the only SNL season without a Christmas Episode.
- During the strike, the cast and writers put on a live "episode" at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City with host Michael Cera and musical guest Yo La Tengo to raise money for the backstage workers affected by the production shutdown.
- Post-strike budget cuts at SNL resulted in the demise of Robert Smigel’s animated “Saturday TV Funhouse” segments.
- Cartoon Network cancelled Out of Jimmy's Head and Class of 3000 due to the strike, as both used WGA writers (though for Class of 3000, the strike was just one of the contributing factors (others being going over-budget and a lawsuit) that led to its cancellation).
- Interestingly, Desperate Housewives was one show that benefited from the strike. The show had just done an episode of a tornado hitting the neighborhood and the long time between new episodes gave a logical excuse for the neighborhood to be rebuilt. Also, the writers acknowledged that they had to drop several "filler" plotlines (such as Mike in rehab) that would have filled the winter and early spring episodes and thus concentrate on the season-ending storylines better.
- My Name Is Earl suffered from the strike. Season 3 changes the plot radically, by having Earl be in Prison for the first half and the second half saw Earl in a coma. The episodes that were done were Bottle Episodes, which ended up tanking the ratings. Season four saw a return to normal, but the ratings never quite recovered, and ended up being its last.
- The Big Bang Theory had its premiere season emerge during the writers strike, and only had 17 episodes compared to a normal 24. This might have actually turned out for the best, as while other more heavily serialized shows got hurt by the strike, the episodic nature of the show meant there was little change in quality and it actually got a boost in ratings when it returned.
- Barney & Friends was unaffected due to being produced in right-to-work Texas, meaning the show continued production without a hitch. The strike began midway through the taping of seasons 12 and 13, which were filmed at the same time, but production was unaffected.
- The Office (US) saw its fourth season cut to 18 episodes and the creative team had to scrap a planned arc where Angela got pregnant as a result of her affair with Dwight. Angela Kinsey was pregnant in real life and by the time production resumed she was too far along for it to be convincingly written into the show, forcing them to employ Hide Your Pregnancy. It also caused season four to be the only season aside from season one (when the show debuted as a midseason replacement) to not have a Christmas Episode.
- The fifth season of One Tree Hill rushed production of the first twelve scripts of the season to ensure they hit 100 episodes and could sell the show into syndication. The scheduled 24 episode order was ultimately cut down to 18, however.
- Soap operas, which generally have a big lead time between taping and air (often around two months) were able to use pre-written scripts for the first part of the strike, but by January all of them had turned to either non-Guild writers, Guild writers who crossed the picket line, or "financial core"
(FiCore) writers, who pay fees to the Guild but aren't members. The WGA views FiCore soap writers as scabs, but tolerates them as a necessary evil, since soaps need someone to write for them during a strike to keep the show going, so Guild writers can still have a job to come back to after the strike. After the strike, the WGA publicly identified all the FiCore writers.
On May 1, 2023, the WGA near-unanimously voted to go on strike after weeks of negotiations over how writers were compensated in the streaming era and concerns over the use of AI in writing stalled.
Over two months into the writers' strike, on July 13, 2023, SAG-AFTRA also voted to go on strike after failing to reach contract negotiations with the AMPTP, making this the first time since 1960 that both writers and actors have been on strike at the same time. (In the interim, the DGA — true to form — managed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the AMPTP without a strike action, and there are reports that AMPTP are using this agreement as a template for their proposals to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.)note
This is also the first strike action since the merger of SAG and AFTRA into a single union, and the first overall actors' strike in over 40 years. The current President of SAG-AFTRA is Fran Drescher, an unusually prominent celebrity (traditionally the job has gone to a "Hey, It's That Guy!"-type character actor) who, appropriately, earned global fame starring as a working-class domestic to a wealthy entertainment executive.
According to SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the SAG-AFTRA strike was also caused by concerns about artificial intelligence, specifically studios proposing using AI to scan and own actors' likenesses forever. Concerns over compensations in media streaming were another factor.
After several days of talks between the WGA and the AMPTP, on September 24, 2023 the two sides reached a tentative agreement,note and the WGA suspended picketing while the details were finalized, though members were free to join SAG-AFTRA picket lines in the meantime. The strike for WGA officially ended on 12:01am PST, September 27th, 2023 after the three internal boards voted unanimously to end the strike. The strike lasted for 148 days, making it the 2nd longest in history. On October 9, 2023, the WGA voted to ratify the contract, officially ending the 2023 WGA Strike. Most analysts regard the final deal as a decisive victory for the WGA, having won nearly everything it asked for in its initial proposals, though some remain skeptical of the long-term effects of the strike.
SAG-AFTRA remained on strike, even authorizing another strike aimed at the video game industry, and the WGA encouraged its members to keep supporting SAG-AFTRA's efforts. AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA would jointly announce their return to the negotiating table on October 2, 2023, but despite strong momentum going into the talks, negotiations stalled and were paused on October 11; they resumed on October 24. On November 8, 2023, SAG-AFTRA announced that their negotiating committee had unanimously voted to accept a deal with AMPTP and that the strike would end effective the following day, November 9th — ending over six months of work stoppage in Hollywood, with an estimated GDP cost of over $6.5 billion.
While seen as a victory, there was still trouble as the contract was scrutinized by people who still had concerns that the proposed AI protections for actors were still insufficient. Despite a campaign to try and reject the contract, it passed with 78% of those who voted to approve it on December 5, 2023.
- Just like during the 2007-08 strike, the late-night talk shows (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Daily Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) announced that they'd all go on hiatus during the duration of the strike. During this time, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert co-hosted the podcast Strike Force Five, with the proceeds benefiting their shows' out-of-work staff. After the WGA strike ended, their shows returned to air on October 2, 2023 (with Last Week Tonight returning on October 1).
- Saturday Night Live: Due to the WGA strike, the last three episodes of season 48 (2022-23) were canceled. The show would return from the strike on October 14, 2023, with the season 49 premiere hosted by Pete Davidson, who was originally scheduled to host the May 6, 2023 episode before its cancellation.
- After Trevor Noah's departure from The Daily Show in December 2022, the show had guest hosts filling in for the first half of 2023, and correspondent Dulce Sloan was starting her turn as guest host when the WGA strike forced the show to suspend production. Once the strike ended, The Daily Show returned to the air on October 16, 2023 with correspondent Michael Kosta guest-hosting.
- Drew Barrymore pulled out of hosting the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards in a show of solidarity with striking WGA members. This year's show went without a host and transitioned from a live show to a pre-taped ceremony instead, with Barrymore agreeing to host their 2024 show.
- However, she would later be at the center of a huge quagmire of controversy when she announced that production was resuming her daytime talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show, with the first week of shows taped and slated to start airing on September 18. Barrymore was roundly criticized, and the WGA and SAG-AFTRA announced plans to picket outside the studio where her show is produced (Barrymore was clear to host the show via the National Code of Fair Practice, mentioned below in the Soap Opera entry, but the show's writing falls under the WGA contract, and Barrymore being a high profile SAG-AFTRA member defying the WGA strike drew SAG-AFTRA's ire). Given the precarious position that syndicated talk shows are in during a work stoppage—they have to answer to their local affiliates and their advertisers rather than a network, and they have contractual obligations to provide new episodes—Barrymore likely got pressured to resume production. But after a week of enduring brickbats over the decision, Barrymore announced on September 17 that the show would pause production, and the already-taped episodes wouldn't air. Even so, the original decision to restart production during the strike led to Barrymore's entire writing staff quitting after the strike, forcing her to scramble to find new writers with just two weeks to spare before the revised season premiere. Her original announcement also caused her to be pulled from hosting the 74th National Book Awards, with LeVar Burton replacing her as host.
- However, she would later be at the center of a huge quagmire of controversy when she announced that production was resuming her daytime talk show
- In a similar example, Bill Maher announced on September 13 that his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, would resume airing during the strike. Like Drew Barrymore, he received a heap of backlash for this announcement, but he would later change course on September 18, stating that the show would instead be delayed.
- Similarly, Mayim Bialik decided against hosting the final taping session of season 39 of Jeopardy! (episodes in that session aired that July) to stand in solidarity with striking WGA members. Ken Jennings would host those episodes instead. The strike also affected season 40, which will exclusively use pre-written clues and former contestants from previous seasons.
- In July 2023, Jeopardy! champions Cris Pannullo and Hannah Wilson announced that they wouldn't participate in the next Tournament of Champions out of solidarity with the striking writers. Later that week, the producers agreed that they would postpone the tournament till the strike ended.
- In December 2023, shortly after the strike ended, Bialik announced that she had been released from her Jeopardy! contract and that Jennings would continue as the sole host of the series. Although she didn't say it in so many words, her participation in the strike is believed to be a key factor in this decision.
- In July 2023
- The Stranger Things production staff announced production on the fifth and final season would go on hiatus in solidarity, stating "Writing does not stop when filming begins". Filming was subsequently announced to begin in January 2024.
- Family Guy and American Dad! were both confirmed by Seth MacFarlane to have been suspended for an unspecified amount of time due to the strike, though season 21 of the former concluded on May 7, five days into the strike, as planned, with Season 22 premiering in September. The latter, meanwhile would take a mid-season break after airing an episode on May 29 for the summer months before also resuming in September.
- In anticipation of the strike, Quantum Leap and La Brea each produced a backlog of scripts, and the former began filming its second season immediately after wrapping on its first.
- Cobra Kai went on production hiatus just as filming of its sixth and final season was set to begin as the strike prevented writers from being on set.
- The official premiere of Oppenheimer was moved back to July 11 so that the actors could appear at it in the event that a strike was called before the general release on July 21, which turned out to be the case. The main actors then walked out of the July 13 UK premiere in solidarity with the strike.
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer delayed their Zendaya-led Challengers to April 26, 2024 and agreed with Venice International Film Festival organizers to cancel its planned world premiere due to the strikes and was pulled out from the festival's lineup.
- In addition, Lionsgate began reshuffling the remainder of its 2023 lineup due to the strikes with White Bird: A Wonder Story being delayed to Q4 of that year while a Dirty Dancing sequel was moved to 2025 and a Borderlands adaptation being dated for August 9, 2024.
- Disney has also pushed Poor Things to December 8th of that year as a result of the strikes. The film still kept its premiere date of September 1 at the Venice Film Festival with other festival dates still planned. They also delayed The Bikeriders indefinitely due to the actors strike and also delayed Elio and Snow White to 2025 in order to possibly make more production time for the former.
- Sony Pictures also had a last-minute chance to push Gran Turismo from its planned August 11th release date to the 25th. Kraven the Hunter was also delayed to August 30, 2024 and Madame Web was delayed to February 14th of that year. Also, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse was delayed indefinitelynote and they delayed their The Karate Kid reboot to December 13 of the following year.
- Focus Features has delayed Drive-Away Dolls to 2024.
- Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures has delayed Dune: Part Two to March 15, 2024 due to the strikes.
- A24 also delayed Problemista indefinitely despite being completed prior to the strikes.
- Netflix has delayed six of their films coming out later in 2023 to unspecified dates in 2024.
- Amazon has cancelled both A League of Their Own and The Peripheral due to the dual strike. Also, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was delayed from 2023 to February 2, 2024.
- Aversion: Pro wrestling has been virtually unaffected. While some wrestlers are SAG-AFTRA members, their membership only covers acting careers on the side, not wrestling. Since WWE writers are non-union, there were no picket lines to cross. AEW doesn't even have writers; all creative production is handled by CEO/booker Tony Khan and the wrestlers themselves.
- Soap operas were mostly unaffected: soap opera actors, while SAG-AFTRA members, continued to work as they are covered under a separate ordinance for SAG-AFTRA members known as the National Code of Fair Practice for Network Television Broadcasting, which covers daytime television performers and workers. In addition, scripts for soap operas are often written months in advance and stockpiled until they're ready to start filming. General Hospital was the first one to switch to non-WGA writers, with the first FiCore-written (see the 2007-08 WGA folder for more details on FiCore) episode airing on July 25. Despite being in official solidarity with the WGA, SAG-AFTRA has to tolerate non-WGA soap writers, since they realize that contractually-bound soap actors still need material during a strike, but individual actors who were out of the loop about how soaps work (especially Lisa Ann Walter) got into dustups on Twitter with soap fans after denouncing GH for using "scab" writers.
- Television animation was mostly unaffected, as SAG-AFTRA's guidance allowed their voice actor members to continue working on animation for television, and many animation writers are affiliated with The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) rather than the WGA.
- Shortly after launching their strike in mid-July, SAG-AFTRA announced that they would be approving interim "waivers" for projects not affiliated with the AMPTP, allowing certain independent films and TV productions to continue during the strike so long as they comply with the terms they propose during their contract negotiations with the AMPTP. Right out the gate, 39 projects compliant with SAG-AFTRA's terms were given permission to resume filming, including two projects by A24 (Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, and Death of a Unicorn, starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega), as well as the likes of The Rivals of Amziah King (starring Matthew McConaughey), Flight Risk (directed by Mel Gibson and starring Mark Wahlberg), Dust Bunny (starring Mads Mikkelsen and Sigourney Weaver), and Bride Hard (starring Rebel Wilson). Union executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland encouraged actors to actively participate in such independent projects, in part to undermine the studio talking point that the union's demands are "unrealistic".
- Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that both union's demands were "very disruptive". This comes after a number of Box Office Bombs for their titles, content purges, their ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic and an ongoing transformation of the company. Many Hollywood veterans have criticized his remarks for being "tone-deaf" and "out-of-touch". Despite this, he later stated a month later that he is personally committed to working to achieving these solutions.
- Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that both union's demands were "very disruptive". This comes after a number of Box Office Bombs for their titles, content purges, their ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic and an ongoing transformation of the company. Many Hollywood veterans have criticized his remarks for being "tone-deaf" and "out-of-touch". Despite this, he later stated a month later that he is personally committed to working to achieving these solutions
- The 2023 Primetime Emmy Awards were postponed from their planned September 18, 2023 airdate. Due to Fox's existing fall commitments, they later dated it for January 15, 2024, which coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day and is squarely within the film awards season.
- All of the Big Four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) are baking in on sports broadcasts, reality TV, and animation during the strike duration. After the strikes, most shows that were planned for the season (new and returning) would return.
- In fact, on September 18, 2023, ABC announced it would simulcast 10 Monday Night Football games for the remainder of the 2023 National Football League season to fill in scheduling gaps caused by the strike.
- Subsequently, on October 2, 2023, ABC announced that they would air 5 NBA regular season games on Wednesday nights throughout January 2024 that were originally intended to be aired on ESPN to further fill in strike related scheduling gaps.
- In fact, on September 18, 2023, ABC announced it would simulcast 10
- A revival of You Bet Your Life hosted by Jay Leno that began in 2021 was cancelled due to the strike.
- On August 31, 2023, it was announced that AMC has made interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA specifically for three shows that can resume filming: Interview with the Vampire (2022), The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
- Production on The Chosen was unaffected by the strikes, as creator Dallas Jenkins and his team have their own collective bargaining agreement with SAG-AFTRA.
- Paramount Pictures began pushing Mission Impossible 8 to May 23, 2025 and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants to December of that year.
- Universal pushed their How to Train Your Dragon live-action adaptation to 2025.
- The live-action adaptation of Lilo & Stitch reportedly had the misfortune of having its principal photography halted by the SAG-AFTRA strike when it had just one week left of filming. Notably, after the SAG-AFTRA strike ended, there weren't any reports of filming resuming for that film, leading some to believe that Disney had decided to work with the footage they managed to get before the actors' strike began. This is also notable due to the plot of the film focusing on a young girl, which made the production more time-sensitive as child actors could have growth spurts at any time.
- When series creator Joel Hodgson announced the fundraiser for Mystery Science Theater 3000 season 14, he could only say that the previous actors were "invited" back for the new season since they were all union workers and the strike was still going. This proved to be one of the factors behind the fundraiser's failure.
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, was pushed from December 20, 2023 to March 22, 2024 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
- Four entries to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Deadpool & Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Captain America Brave New World and Blade were delayed to 2024 and 2025.
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 and Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4 both aired in the middle of the strikes, thus preventing cast and crew from discussing the two seasons during the strike. According to Tawny Newsome, Lower Decks season 5 was actually ahead of schedule when the SAG-AFTRA strike hit, but they decided to strike in solidarity despite being an animated work not part of the strike. These two were also the only seasons not to have the Ready Room aftershows.
- The Hulu revival of Futurama premiered during the strikes, limiting the crew's promotional efforts. The San Diego Comic Con panel was headed by members of the art and production crew with no writers or voice actors on board (an early premiere of the season's first episode helped film time). However, the WGA strike ended right before New York Comic Con, allowing showrunner David X. Cohen to attend the panel alongside the production staff.
British strikes:
A franchise shakeup led to a lot of workers being forced to move location (there were no actual job losses). A dispute over who would get redundancy payments (specifically over those moving company, but not location) led to wildcat strikes and lockouts.
ITV was taken off the air in August 1968, leading to the management creating a “ITV Emergency National Service”, which was only repeats, pre-recorded programmes or live continuity links.
A month later, the strike ended, all sides claiming victory. The bitterness would continue, though...
1970 "Colour Strike"
Technicians at all ITV companies had a pay dispute with the management. In retaliation, they refused to use colour equipment and only recorded shows in monochrome, which meant ITV couldn't sell airtime to advertisers at the higher rates they requested for colour and couldn't make full use of the colour equipment they had just heavily invested in.
To create a monochrome image with the colour equipment, the technicians simply switched off the colour tubes on their cameras† and switched off the colour signal on their telecine machines (used for filmed location footage).
The strike lasted from 13 November 1970 to 8 February 1971 and affected such programs as Coronation Street, The Benny Hill Show, The Golden Shot, Please Sir!, Upstairs Downstairs, On the Buses, Crossroads and Timeslip.
1979 ITV Strike
Electricians (an important job in TV production) at Thames Television, the station that provided the ITV service for viewers in London from Monday to Friday afternoon and undoubtedly the Team Mom of the ITV network, walked out over a pay increase they felt was derisory. The management tried to maintain a normal service, but other workers refused to help do this. Thames told the strikers to “return or else”.
In response, ACTT (the broadcasting union) got 13 of the other ITV regional stations to go on strike as well, this being a time when sympathy strikes were still permitted in Britain. Channel Television, serving The Channel Islands, was the only company in the network to continue broadcasting during the blackout, because the tiny size of its audience meant a loss of revenue could have put it out of business.
The result was the nearly total shut down of ITV for ten weeks (10 August to 5.43pm on 24 October) and the loss of around £100m in revenue for the striking companies. Channel Television sustained itself with extended regional news bulletins and Western movies.
In other areas of the UK, with only three channels at this point in time, The BBC was the sole alternative, resulting in Doctor Who getting its highest ratings ever for “City of Death”, a record that even David Tennant’s regeneration barely scraped.
- Doctor Who didn’t escape strike action. That season saw “Shada” ultimately cancelled after strike action prevented the second and third studio session from taking place, although in that case it was a tube strike, not an industry one. The completed portions were released on VHS in 1992, and eventually done as an audio drama for the Eighth Doctor in 2003, before finally being released in full as originally written in 2017, with the unfinished parts animated. Scriptwriter Douglas Adams reused the concepts he originally came up with for this serial for what eventually became Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
- This period had “work-to-rule” going on a fair bit. The DVD for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) includes an extra showing the cast and crew trying (and just succeeding) to get a scene filmed before the lights were turned off.
The strike ended in a victory for the unions. ITV wasn’t able to air much newly-produced programming for two-and-a-half months (showing lots of episodes of 3–2–1 instead), but gradually recovered its audience.
It was the longest dispute in British television history.
