On this day in 2008, Hollywood’s longest work stoppage since 1988 ended, when members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted by a margin of more than 90 per cent to go back to work after a walkout that began 100 days earlier.
Negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) stalled after WGA members demanded a share of the revenues generated by movies, television shows and other works distributed on the Internet and viewed on computers, cellphones and other new media devices. Heavily covered by the press, the walkout proved to be much more damaging to the entertainment industry than expected.
More than 60 TV shows had to be shut down, causing a drop in ratings and the loss of tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue for the networks. By its end, the strike was estimated to have cost the local Los Angeles economy more than $3 billion, taking into account lost wages for writers and crew members, lost business for service industries such as catering and equipment rental, and reduced consumer spending.
For the duration of the strike, TV viewers at home were forced to go without new episodes of their favourite shows, as networks dealt with the shutdown of production by loading the schedule with reruns and increased quantities of reality programming. Negotiators reached a tentative agreement on 8 February, and both the East Coast and West Coast branches of the WGA ratified the deal on 10 February.
Two days later, the writers themselves approved the truce, and a new contract with the AMPTP was signed on 25 February. Based in part on a deal signed the previous month between production companies and the Directors Guild of America, the new contract gave WGA members residual payments for programmes streamed online (at a much higher rate than that paid for DVDs) and formalised union jurisdiction over programming created for the web.
Writers would be paid for shows streamed on advertising-supported websites and WGA members hired to write original content for the web would be covered under a union contract.
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