The Horror Ahead: Survival in a Vast TV Wasteland

Negotiations began this week between Hollywood’s screenwriters and production executives, trying to head off a possible strike that could result in a TV-film shutdown and in thousands of writers having no business in show business.

A tremendous impact of such a strike would be felt in television, where viewers could be left watching virtually nothing with a script. Just quiz shows, talk shows and “reality” shows with creepy people cut off from civilization.

For some of us, this might mean 24 hours a day, seven days a week of watching the Weather Channel.

(Either that or one of those networks where Martha Stewart is making a quilt out of old banana peels and earrings out of pine cones.)

A writers union contract expires April 1, and if no agreement is reached, TV and film production could screech to a halt. One published estimate said such a strike could cost L.A. County’s entertainment-related businesses alone an estimated $2 billion a month--that’s billion, with a B.

Oh, and you know what else could happen if fewer films or TV programs get made?

They might need to cancel hundreds of next year’s award presentations, like the ones we’re now having here practically every night. Let’s see, what will tonight’s be--the People’s Favorite Foreign Correspondent Cable Ace L.A. Film Critics Directors Guild Golden Gerbil Awards?

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I can comment publicly on little else regarding the contract combat between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America, because I am a dues-paying member of the latter organization and therefore bilious with bias. (I side with writers in any dispute, even when we are wrong, which is often.)

This much I can tell you:

John Wells, who is president of WGA West as well as the creator and brains behind a couple of television’s top programs, made a few opening remarks Monday when the guild’s negotiating committee met with CEOs from major studios and production companies and their labor relations reps.

“We have all read much too much about the likelihood of a strike this summer,” Wells said at one point. “It was a good story, hard to resist, and so few journalists bothered to resist it.”

Well, thanks a bunch, John. There’s nothing like bashing another industry to make a point about your own.

“Personally,” Wells went on, “I hope it ends up being our own version of the overblown Y2K terror of 13 months ago. An intriguing story at the time that is embarrassing to all concerned in hindsight.”

What can I say, John--when you’re right, you’re right. It would have been so much better for everybody responsible for all that Y2K “terror” had they not bothered preparing anybody in advance for the possibility of a computer glitch. From now on, we stick our necks out for nobody.

Journalists should remember not to report on the “likelihood of a strike” in your business, because if it doesn’t happen, it would just be too darned embarrassing to all concerned.

We’ve already had a tough year or two, strike-wise, here in Los Angeles, what with janitors, bus drivers, county workers and others either walking off the job at some point or coming very close to doing so.

Right now, frankly, I’m not so much worried about TV programs getting made as I am about not having enough electricity left in California to plug in my TV.

Yet there are vital issues to be addressed by the Writers Guild, to be sure--like why a director gets away with hogging credit for “A Film By,” even if the film was also by a couple thousand other people.

How come a play gets to be by William Shakespeare or Neil Simon, but a movie is by somebody who yells: “Cut!”?

Oops, there I go again, expressing an opinion about this possible (but unlikely) TV-film writers’ strike. Sorry.

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Without a script to shoot, however, keep in mind that TV executives would begin thinking up more “reality” programs for us to watch. More shows where we have to watch human beings being themselves.

That means we’d probably get a TV show with 25 female aerobics instructors stranded on a desert isle with a bachelor billionaire. We’d get 12 vegetarians locked inside a house with nothing but 24 cans of Spam.

We might even have a weekly show where a popular supermodel has to survive 72 hours inside a men’s maximum security prison.

Wait a minute. I’m a writer. I’d better stop giving producers ideas.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to: Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com