tapmag

Two and a half months into the writer’s strike and the first late night shows are back on the screen. In the first week of January, David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien all returned to restore nightly TV routine. A week later, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show followed suit. How did Jon Stewart do? Did he survive out there without the scripted gags of his humoristic elves and their mighty pens?

To find out, we tried to get into the studio and watch the taping of his first show back on air. Unfortunately, about 500 other people had the same idea. Instead of lining up at the end of the queue around the block, we talked to one of the protesting writers in front of the studio.

tapmag: Hi, what‘s your name?

Writer: Gale

tapmag: …and you‘re a writer at The Daily Show?

Gale: No. None of us who are here today are writers at The Daily Show. We are here to show support for the writers of The Daily Show who are on strike as well. We want Jon Stewart to go back to work. We are all big fans of his, we think he is very funny, but we want him to go back to work with his writers.

tapmag: Who is writing the gags right now, where are the jokes coming from?

Gale: I have no idea, I assume from Jon Stewart. He‘s a funny man.

tapmag: What exactly is “the write thing” to do now?

Gale: The right thing to do now is to try to get the AMPTP [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – ed.] back to the table and to negotiate fairly with the writers. They have walked away from the table and they won‘t even talk to us.

tapmag: What do you say to the claim that the whole strike is breaking the spine of the industry and is putting off audiences for years to come?

Gale: Well, I would be very sorry if that happens. But, I don‘t think you can blame the writers for that because we are ready, willing, and able to go to work and now we are being forbidden from going to work because the AMPTP will not negotiate with us. We‘re at the ball game and they left. There‘s nothing we can do until they come back.

tapmag: Are you looking forward to seeing reality TV shows such as American Gladiator back on air?

Gale: Not at all! But I hope everyone else is excited about it because we are going to see a lot of them. It‘s going to be American Idol vs. American Gladiator for many months.

tapmag: Well, all these Hulk Hogans have to make a living somehow.

Gale: You bet!

tapmag: Looking at the digital challenges which are threatening all media companies right now, how do you think writers can protect their main source of income – intellectual property – from file sharing and piracy?

Gale: I don‘t know that we can. That‘s part of the problem and until we get cooperation and [the AMPTP] helps us to protect it, I don‘t think there‘s an easy solution.

tapmag: Thank you very much, good luck.

Gale: Thank you.
And guess what, after watching the show on TV, we can gladly say that talking to the writers was the right thing to do. Jon Stewart without his safety net of written jokes is just the half the man he ought to be (back us up here, New York Times). To be fair, it’s all still better than The Millionaire Matchmaker, The Celebrity Apprentice, The Baby Borrowers and whatever else reality TV has bestowed on us in these dark days of scriptless TV.

Here’s a bit of propaganda from the writers side which does a good job at explaining what the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) wants:

The producers simply claim that the numbers are on their side:

It’s official: The people in charge at the WGA have led working writers into a strike that has now cost those working writers more in salary and benefits than the WGA’s organizers ever expected to gain from the strike.

Of course, future revenue from internet sales are not included in this equation. What nobodys asks: What are the costs for the industry? And what about the audience? Is there no Guild of American Couch Potatoes and Movie-goers (GCPM) out there that declares a strike of the viewing masses? Time is ripe.

By Kolja Langnese