Fox sees $ signs in picket lines

STRIKING writers had a special message for Fox executives Friday morning.

An estimated 3,000 picketers massed outside Fox’s Century City headquarters, where they were serenaded by guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, an anti-corporate, far-left band that has made a career of telling listeners how to stick it to the Man. One sign bore a doctored photo of Peter Chernin, president of Fox parent News Corp., extending his middle finger over the legend, “Write this!”

Writers Guild of America members have reason to be particularly steamed with Chernin. During a Wednesday earnings call with analysts, Rupert Murdoch’s top lieutenant had the temerity to suggest that, far from being a fearsome prospect, the writers strike could be, like, a good thing for Fox. Other honchos, such as NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker, have downplayed the strike’s effect. But they haven’t matched Chernin for zesty optimism: Strike? Yes, please -- may I have another?

Calling the strike “probably a positive” for the company, Chernin added: “We save more money in term deals and, you know, story costs and probably the lack of making pilots than we lose in potential advertising.”

As Jon Stewart would say, “Well-played, sir.” Telling striking writers that the corporate balance sheet is better off without their salaries mucking everything up is what you might call negotiation by other means. (Grist for someone’s interdisciplinary economics/lit dissertation: Try to calculate Shakespeare’s “story costs.”)

But here’s the thing: Chernin’s probably right. At least in the short term, News Corp. stands to benefit from the strike, largely because Fox is in a much better position than its rivals to weather the work stoppage.

Sure, a lot of the Fox advantage has to do with its ratings leviathan, the presumably strike-proof “American Idol,” which the network announced last week would return with a super-sized four-hour premiere starting Jan. 15. (Fox also said it would postpone the seventh season of “24” indefinitely, although after last season’s tumbling ratings and critically dissed storylines, that might not cause execs much pain.)

“Idol” is just the beginning, though. When you stack everything up, you begin to understand why Chernin and Murdoch are laughing amid the industry panic. And also why, despite all the claims of “Norma Rae”-like solidarity this week, the scribes might end up having to knuckle under for companies that are already practically mocking them. Rage against the machine, indeed.

“Fox does come out on top because of ‘American Idol,’ ” said Jack Myers, a veteran media analyst and creator of the MediaVillage.com website. Longer-term effects might be harder to decipher, he added: “This strike could radically remake the industry.”

When it comes to labor relations, the gods seem to smile on Murdoch. Or more likely, his characteristic brazenness nearly always serves him well in a crisis. In 1986, when unionized British printers tried to put the squeeze on him, Murdoch played hardball and switched to non-union workers in what one account dubbed “the biggest union-busting operation in history.”

We all know that TV and film scriptwriting is a wholly different beast than feeding tabloid newsprint into a printing press. But industry vets with long memories will recall that Fox also found a way to benefit from the last Hollywood writers strike, back in 1988. (A News Corp. spokesman said Chernin would not elaborate beyond his remarks to analysts; Fox Broadcasting executives would not comment for the record.)

The Fox network, which had gone on the air less than two years earlier, was struggling prior to the ’88 work stoppage. But the dropoff in fresh TV fare during the strike encouraged many viewers to check out repeats of Fox offerings such as the scabrous sitcom “Married . . . With Children.” Just a few weeks after the strike started, the network debuted the crime-oriented reality show “America’s Most Wanted,” which has been a Fox staple ever since.

By the end of 1988, Jamie Kellner, then the chief of Fox Broadcasting, was crowing to the Los Angeles Times: “We believed from the beginning we would begin to break through, and it looks like we have.”

In retrospect, the strike didn’t have nearly as big an effect on Fox’s long-term fortunes as, say, snagging a key NFL broadcast deal in 1993, which instantly put the network on equal footing with ABC, CBS and NBC. But the point is that Murdoch & Co. figured out a way to spin presumed strike-related losses into opportunistic gold.

That’s what they’re likely to do this time around too.

“Idol” has delivered the highest ratings in TV even when programmed four or more hours per week -- and there’s no reason to expect its ratings to diminish this season. Au contraire -- a strike-afflicted schedule on other networks would probably push more viewers to the singing contest.

Also remember that Fox has to fill only 15 hours of prime time per week, as opposed to 22 hours for competitors (Fox’s prime time ends at 10 p.m., one hour earlier than other networks).

As one Fox insider joked, “That makes it one-third easier” to fill strike-vacated programming slots.

Fox is already strong because it’s led the last few seasons in the crucial 18-to-49 age demographic. It now has a lineup of midseason scripted series ready to go, led by “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” which is already stirring up considerable buzz. It has a potent weapon in reality guru Mike Darnell, who’s proved adept at concocting ratings-grabbing (if not always legally advisable) unscripted fare, often on very short notice. And it has a talented new entertainment president in Kevin Reilly, the former top NBC programmer, who could conceivably leverage Fox’s financial clout into a flurry of post-strike deals with the town’s top writing talent.

And if the strike lasts longer than even pessimists predict? Well, the whole point of vertical integration over the last decade is that it’s made these media conglomerates diversified. News Corp., as Murdoch likes to point out, isn’t just about Fox. The company owns MySpace. It controls newspapers and satellite operations around the world. Soon it will own the Wall Street Journal.

Writers would do well to remember all this as they walk the picket lines, and showrunners -- the hyphenate writer-producers stuck in the middle of all this -- fret over the fate of their shows. There are already rumblings that the strike may mean curtains for certain underperforming but critically beloved series, most notably NBC’s “Friday Night Lights.”

Thus, it’ll be interesting to see how many showrunners, some of whom signed a two-page screenwriters ad in Variety last week promising a united front, may be glimpsed tiptoeing past picket lines this week.

It’s not Chernin’s fault -- well, not entirely, anyway -- that the writers are facing this unappetizing dilemma, one that Rage Against the Machine somehow never put to music: Their show or their union?

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Times staff writer Lorenza Munoz contributed reporting to this column.