When the dust settles on the strike of '07 -- now 19 days old -- we'll probably see it as a Hollywood turning point. No, not in the history of the Writers Guild of America, or of the studios and networks. It's a critical and historic shift for TV show runners.
The guild and the studios return to the bargaining table Monday, and there's probably a long road of negotiation still ahead, with the strong likelihood that, as in past writers' work stoppages, no clear "winner" will emerge. But when assessing the eventual outcome, look at the show runners, the executive producers who are in charge of television series. These are the writer-producers who are emerging as the dominant force of a fragmented and slowly recombining TV industry. It's a business that's tilting -- or maybe more accurately, groping -- its way toward the Internet and other new media. And show runners are at the center of it all.
Show runners are "hyphenates," a curious hybrid of starry-eyed artists and tough-as-nails operational managers. They're not just writers; they're not just producers. They hire and fire writers and crew members, develop story lines, write scripts, cast actors, mind budgets and run interference with studio and network bosses. It's one of the most unusual and demanding, right-brain/left-brain job descriptions in the entertainment world.
Sure, show runners have always had power that often extends well beyond their own shows. That's especially true of the industrious few who at one time or another have had multiple series on the air simultaneously: David E. Kelley, Dick Wolf, John Wells, J.J. Abrams, Shonda Rhimes, Shawn Ryan, Seth MacFarlane and others.
But the strike is proving that show runners are beginning to call the industry's shots in ways that other traditional power sources -- trade unions, studio bosses, network executives, agents -- either cannot or will not do. Indeed, The Times and other outlets have reported that TV writer-producers, along with agents and a few influential screenwriters, played a crucial back-channel role in pressuring the studios and the guild to come back to the bargaining table.
During the early days of the strike, show runners separated into two camps, so-called hawks and moderates. The hawks are sticking by the guild's ultra-strict, nine-page list of strike rules, which forbid writers from even entering the gates of a struck company. The hawk position has found an emissary in Ryan, of "The Shield" and "The Unit," who is a member of the guild's negotiating committee. In a militant, widely circulated Nov. 5 e-mail, he said he would "do nothing" on his shows throughout the strike.
