As game show fans, maybe we should be rooting on the inevitable writer's strike that's all the news this week. Primetime lineups will start to look like a multi-channel GSN: Amazing Race, 1 vs. 100, Power of 10, more Deal or no Deal (sigh), and even Millionaire might be back in the picture.

So on the surface that's great right? Well, two things to keep in mind:

1) Burnout. If the strike goes on for months, viewers will eventually turn their backs in a concerted anti-game show backlash. We saw what happened in 2002 when Millionaire died a cold death in primetime, when only 2 or 3 primetime games were airing concurrently at most. Imagine a lineup full of games and reality? The cyclical nature of the industry could really bite fans hard here.

2) Remember your good friends in the industry. A lot of game shows are worked on by guild members, infamously including Temptation (which already had serious writers issues of its own). Just because games are in production doesn't mean that every hard-working game show employee is getting in on the action.

Looking at the numerics in this Futon Critic article, it's hard to not side with the writers, given the ridiculously small take they get in theses shows that often profit hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

posted by Brad @ 2:05 PM   1 comment(s)