In just these recent days in Hollywood, as network executives went before the nation's TV critics to explain their midseason schedule changes, there has been an undertow of discussion about the impending labor negotiations between the studios and the writers and actors who turn out the shows we watch.
     There is a growing sense among some that a strike is inevitable come spring. 
    They would do well to remember 1988. That was the year of the last major strike by the Writers Guild of America. 
   To say those memories are unpleasant would be an understatement.
   For 22 weeks, from March 7 through Aug. 7, the writers did not write and television ground to a halt. 
    Thirteen years later, the networks are still paying for those five months of darkened TV sets. 
    Already facing audience erosion, network executives watched as Americans turned off their TV sets in disgust. And when they turned them back on again months later, there were a lot fewer viewers. 
   Nearly 10 percent of Americans declined to tune back in.
    Observers rightly worry that a strike today could cause far more damage. And that damage would occur in far less time.
    Unlike many strikes, the 1988 strike just seemed to happen, taking both sides by surprise.
     According to George Kirgo, president of the WGA during the ’88 strike, few actually expected the work stoppage until nearly the last minute.
    "Before the strike, there was no expectation of a strike. I certainly didn’t expect it, and our negotiating committee didn’t expect it. Finally a week before the strike, we thought then that it might actually happen," he says.
   The last time the WGA had walked out was in 1985, a disastrous affair from the union’s perspective. The strike lasted only two weeks, and the WGA was forced to capitulate on most of its demands.
   Kirgo believes that the studios expected the same thing in 1988.
   "I think it was a miscalculation of what the union had become. After 1985 the union was badly battered and bruised. But in the three years since, we had organized internally for this possibility. We were situated where we wouldn’t take any crap. The companies thought that we were still in the weakened position," he says.
   The next five months would be hard times indeed for all involved. Rifts appeared in the ranks of both sides, while negotiators and a federal mediator struggled to work out an agreement.
   By the end of the strike, network television had to push its fall season all the way back to the winter holidays. Network TV lost 9 percent of its audience, from which it never really recovered. Bidding wars ensued over scripts, causing a ramp-up in prices that some say persists even now.
   Not only were the writers out of work for nearly half a year, but layoffs rippled outward to production workers, caterers, shipping services and a host of other industries that depended on film and television for their business.
    Overall, the Los Angeles economy lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the strike.
   The 1988 strike produced no clear-cut winner. The resulting contract was a picture of compromise.
   "It’s very hard for a union like the WGA to ever say that a strike was truly successful. You can argue that the writers won on the issue they struck for, but they were out of work for a long time," says Dr. Ronald Seeber, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and co-editor of a volume about labor relations in the entertainment industry.
   Today the networks appear in certain respects to be in a much more sensitive position than they were in 1988.
   The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation projects a loss as high as $2 billion a month in salaries and other costs. By comparison, the recent commercial actors’ strike cost $230 million over six months.
   The big networks have spent most of this decade watching their audience slip away toward cable, a process begun largely as a result of the 1988 strike.
    Now that cable offerings have multiplied many times over and the internet is so widely available, six months of reruns in 2001 would almost certainly push many more people to explore other viewing options.
   "The delay of the season was a much bigger deal in 1988 than it is today. Now the season fluctuates so much. And with cable it’s not even clear that people would notice if the networks’ programs were delayed a few weeks," says Seeber.
   In other words, a delayed season might be less jarring to viewers than it was in 1988, but it could also dramatically speed up the erosion of viewership for the networks.
    Seeber notes that many of the issues of the 1988 strike closely resemble what is breaking the deal in 2001. Then, as now, most of the points deal with refiguring residuals, the formulas by which writers get paid for programs and films shown in repeats, syndication and foreign distribution, to name a few.
    "The actors and writers have been trying to track the income that comes in after the initial showing. That is the fundamental story in Hollywood for the last 20 years. Every strike between 1960 and 1990 was over residuals in some form or another," says Seeber.
   As new technologies and distribution channels emerge, this is a battle that will likely be fought again and again in coming years.
    But in spite of reigning pessimism, the WGA’s Kirgo believes that the industry learned a lesson from 1988, namely that a prolonged strike could do irreparable damage to both sides.
    "I think everybody is going to come to their senses. I honestly believe that they will not let another strike happen."

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life

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