Two strikes and we’re out?

So if you didn’t know, there’s a big thing potentially going down within the next week. No, not involving North Korea or Syria — this one’s closer to home and maybe not being talked about quite so much. The Writers’ Guild of America is about to go on strike again.

The last time this happened in late 2007, it cost the industry an estimated 2.5 billion dollars in lost revenue, but more than that had cascading effects on several television shows of the time, up to and including delays and cancellations. Look at that list and you’ll see how most of the late-night talk shows went to re-runs for the duration, and there’s no reason to doubt it won’t happen again. The strike is, rightly or wrongly, credited for both killing off the momentum of the promising Heroes series and cementing the ascendancy of reality television, which got around the strike by professing to be “unscripted” (for a given definition of unscripted, anyhow). It also is pointed to as a period where web-based series and shows started to get a lot more eyeballs as people hungered for content that the boob tube wasn’t delivering and writers… well, I know my share of professional writers and much like Dawn gets antsy if she hasn’t drawn anything in awhile, writers gotta write. If you’re a fan of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, for instance, you could consider the upside.

But they’d also like some health care, which is the current sticking point of negotiations, and the Studio argument they can’t afford to help out is dimly looked at in the face of revelations like the head of CBS getting multi-million dollar bonuses for 2016. If you’re interested in the whys and wherefores of both sides, this article has a pretty good rundown.

It’s not yet a done deal that the strike will happen, but if it does, and it lasts at least as long as the last one, I wonder what the impact will be this time around? Will it accelerate the exodus from network and cable television that the 2007 strike arguably started? Will it hurt services like Netflix and Hulu, or help them? Will any feature films still in early development be affected, like the upcoming Captain Marvel movie? And will anything currently running suffer a Heroes-esque meltdown?

We’ve often heard the past several years described as a “Golden Age of Television,” but I don’t think it’s understating to say a strike now certainly has the potential to end that. But don’t worry, for Zombie Ranch at least it will still be creation as usual. Just be prepared, especially if you’re a fan of late-night talk shows, because in about a week the re-runs could begin…