The New York Times calls daytime soaps "the only reliable option for viewers interested in watching rerun-free, serialized drama on broadcast television" because shows like General Hospital are still being cranked out, irregardless of the fact that their writers are on strike! How does that make sense? Who's doing the writing?
Judging by the creepy one-eyed pirate dad on Days Of Our Lives, methinks that person is having a liiiiitle too much fun.
None of the eight daytime dramas on network television have gone into reruns, and none have plans to do so. But in a genre that thrives on drawn-out cliffhangers, the most sensational mystery in daytime may be how these shows are being written at all, considering that nearly all of their writers are guild members on strike.
A handful of writers, for “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital” on ABC and “The Young and the Restless” on CBS, have officially crossed picket lines to return to work in recent weeks, invoking a guild designation known as “financial core,” or financial need. But they are the exception. The sexual shenanigans, back-from-the-grave miracles and double-dealing that are the lifeblood of such shows are being scripted by mostly uncredited, ragtag staffs variously made up of network executives, producers, secretaries and, some union members insist, scabs who are either writing sub rosa or slipping plot points to management.
Consider that “The Young and the Restless,” which before the strike carried a writing staff of more than a dozen, now lists just three writers in its closing credits, each a guild member granted financial core status.
“There’s just no way three people can be doing that job,” said Sandra Weintraub, a striking writer who has written for the show for more than three years. “With the Internet, people don’t ever have to cross a picket line. So we’ll never know.”
While many of the soap episodes shown last week were based on scripts written by guild members before the strike — each daytime drama tends to ready episodes at least two months in advance — network representatives refused to say exactly how they were preparing the shows that will be seen as those stockpiles are depleted.
“The shows are staffed, and we have people in place to continue producing original programming,” ABC said in a statement, which also noted that “producers are aiding in the process.” The actors are typically members of unions that are not on strike, and some have joined the picket lines during breaks.
In an interview a woman who had been an office assistant on a network soap during the last writers’ strike, in 1988, described a frenetic, all-hands-on-deck approach that provides clues to the contingency plans being implemented in the writers’ rooms this time around. She said that she was quickly drafted to become her show’s head writer — she said she would have been fired had she declined — which had the immediate effect of raising her salary from $150 a week to $2,500 a week, a raise that lasted for the six-month duration of the strike.
“People from all different areas were suddenly writers — the assistant director, people who ran errands for the show,” said the woman, who agreed to recount her experience as long as her name, and that of her show, were withheld because she still occasionally writes for soaps. “If you were associated in any way with that show before the strike came, opportunity was knocking on your door, no matter what position you held.”
At first, the woman said, the replacement writers relied on a document known as “the bible,” in which the regular writers had mapped plots for the next few months, a process they would have followed regardless of the strike. But when those story lines ran out, the woman said, she began making clandestine visits to the home of one striking writer to take notes on what that writer thought should happen next. Though the writer risked being branded a scab, the woman said, the writer was more wary of returning to the show someday and having to undo whatever damage had been done to the plots.
After the strike, the woman said, she returned to her assistant’s job but eventually left the show. This time around the few soap writers who have openly returned to work have engendered rancor among the more than 100 still walking the picket lines. [More at NY Times]
