LITTLE ROCK — I've gotten a couple of e-mails from readers who wanted to know more about a possible TV writers' strike.
These are savvy readers. Students of the medium with long memories who recall the chaos, the horror, the devastating blow to the American way of life that occurred almost 20 years ago.
The great Writers Guild of America strike in 1988 forced the reeling networks to scramble for filler programs. What we got were all those news magazine shows.
Two decades later, the survivors of those programs have degenerated into fluff and scandal and underage sex sting operations.
Oh, the humanity.
The possibility looms again. The WGA contract expires on Halloween and if they walk out, TV viewers (not to mention moviegoers) will once more be plunged into the abyss of uncertainty.
As Nietzsche said, "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Nobody wants that.
So, what's the beef? What are the writers fussed up about?
The current writers' contracts were negotiated before many of the recent technological changes arrived to affect all forms of media.
A goodly portion of a writer's income is derived from residuals - repeat business on stuff they wrote. For example, the author of a Law & Order episode would be paid by the network when it first aired and be paid again when the episode is in syndication and encores on TNT.
Sometimes the residual paycheck can be as high as 50 percent of the original. The gift that keeps on giving.
The main sore spot with the writers is that their current contracts barely compensate them for DVD sales. The sale of boxed sets of programs has soared in recent years and the writers have been shut out.
In addition, they aren't being paid for their work when it encores on-demand or online. Online episodes are becoming increasingly important to the TV industry and what the future holds in that area is a mystery.
This is a time of flux in the TV industry. The old ways of doing business are rapidly changing. Decades-old revenue streams are fading and new avenues are emerging.
The networks have never reacted quickly to change and want to take things slowly. The writers worry that going too slowly will leave them shut out.
The negotiations continue with Nov. 1 edging ever closer.
Meanwhile, the networks are filming as fast as they can and have ordered as many new scripts as possible. Even so, if the writers strike, fresh episodes will dry up by the middle of January.
What then? Just as newsmagazines popped up like toadstools in 1988, reality shows could cover the landscape in the middleof winter.
To paraphrase Christina Rosetti:
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
And Deal or No Deal
came on six nights a week.
Reality shows are not covered in the WGA contracts. Are you ready for Dancing With Dog the Bounty Hunter or America's Next Top Punk'd Person?
Late-night TV would cease immediately. More sports programs (NASCAR?) could be in prime time. Reruns would be rampant and old movies could fill the void.
A strike of any length would ripple into pilot season and affect next fall. The plug would be pulled on current programs that don't show solid promise of keeping viewer interest.
Some might believe all this would be a good thing, forcing us to redefine our priorities. That's all utopian Pollyanna, rose-colored silly talk. Americans would never return to reading books or actually talking to one another. We'd simply watch whatever swill they put on the tube.
Speaking of swill.
NBC unloads the latest vapid waste of an hour at 7 p.m. Wednesday when Phenomenon premieres. The reality show pairs illusionist Criss Angel with mentalist Uri Geller in a search for the world's next great mentalist.
Just remember, it's an hour you can never, ever get back.
Deja Vu?
A Hot Springs reader with exceedingly good penmanship wrote a letter - an actual letter - asking if The CW's new Reaper wasn't a rehash of Brimstone, a Fox series that ran for 13 episodes in the 1998-1999 season.
Well, yeah. There are similarities in that our hero must return escaped souls to hell. There is rarely anything truly original on TV, but even Shakespeare borrowed from others.
Brimstone had a dead detective (Peter Horton) whose job was to return 113 escaped souls in order to get another shot at redemption. In Reaper, our guy is still alive, a geek and not a murdering detective and works at a big box store. See the difference?
Serious TV.
For those who like their TV tinged with scary reallife situations, Frontline presents "Showdown With Iran." The program airs at 9 p.m. today on PBS and AETN. The program "examines the rise of Iran as one of America's greatest threats and most puzzling foreign policy challenges."
The episode covers the history of Iran since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including "the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions and Tehran's open threats to drive America out of the Middle East."
Going all the way. Gossip Girl, The CW's youth-oriented soaper about the young, spoiled and rich, has gotten a full-season order from the network. The show is the poster child for multimedia success, getting buzz on TV, in recorded viewing, on the Web and iTunes.
Is this the model for measuring a show's future success? Ask a TV writer.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
Style, Pages 31 on 10/23/2007