A strike by American comedy writers began just after midnight on Monday, as last-minute negotiations between screenwriters and producers to avert a walkout failed.
More than 12,000 movie and television writers represented by the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East have been on a "Go Slow" since last March but have now decided to stop writing all together. Such industrial action has not happenned since 1988. That strike lasted five months and cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.
Our Arts correspondent, Michael Dunne, who has been following the story for over a year said yesterday,
"It is true, American writers have been on a "Go Slow" for some time now, which effectively means they have been refusing to write anything funny for over six months. When it was programmes such as ' Hannah Montana ' nobody seemed to notice. However when 'The Simpson's' writers, Michael Price and Joel H. Cohen, decided to get involved, suddenly people in America started to take notice."
What is in dispute is the contract between the unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The sides have been at odds over, among other things, writers' demands for a large increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD, and for a bigger share of the revenue from such work delivered over the Internet.
However not everyone is in support of the militant action.
Ex Friends writer Andrew Reich told our reporter yesterday,
"The situation is getting quite serious. The writers guild is becoming aggressive in it's approach. I wrote a funny caption for a satirical cartoon in the New York Times last weekend which resulted in my wife receiving a threatening phonecall at 3:00 in the morning and when I made a witty remark about Stem Cell research on NBC news my car tyres were slashed. Everything I write or say on TV from now on will have to be approved by them first . I have been warned that anything other than basic juvenile humour with no real point to it will be censored. It seems like I could be writing for 'Everybody Loves Raymond' for some time."
