Tony Figueroa
I represent the first generation who, when we were born, the television was now a permanent fixture in our homes. When I was born people had breakfast with Barbara Walters, dinner with Walter Cronkite, and slept with Johnny Carson. Read the full "Pre-ramble"
Showing posts with label Writer's Strike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writer's Strike. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Mental Sorbet: Strike Force Five Is And Always Will Be: Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers, Oliver and Colbert
Friday, September 08, 2023
Monday, March 06, 2023
This Week in Television History: March 2023 PART II
March 7, 1988
Writers Guild of America strike begins.
After
rejecting what the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)
said was a final offer, representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA)
called a strike for all the union’s members to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on
this day in 1988.
The origins of the strike went back to late 1987, when
producers began demanding that writers accept a sliding scale on
residuals--payment received when work is re-broadcast after its original airing--from
domestic syndicated reruns of one-hour shows, claiming that syndication prices
had dropped. Writers balked at this restriction; they also wanted a bigger
share of foreign rights and more creative control over the scripts they were
writing. With negotiations stalled, the current contract between the AMPTP and
the WGA expired at midnight on March 1, and the strike began a week later.
Some companies got around the strike by signing
interim deals with the WGA, including Carsey-Werner Co., producers of The
Cosby Show, who were able to continue production on a new sitcom, Roseanne,
which shot to No. 2 in the ratings that season. Near the end of July, after the
writers rejected a settlement, the entertainment lawyer Ken Ziffren stepped in
to run interference between the two sides of the conflict. Along with the
producers’ chief negotiator, Nick Counter, Ziffren got both producers and
writers to modify their positions in time for a meeting in early August at the
headquarters of the AMPTP in Sherman Oaks, California. Sixteen hours
later, the strike was over, after the two sides struck a deal by which
producers upped the payment for foreign rights and writers agreed to the
sliding scale on syndication residuals.
Though it came at a relatively opportune time, as the
networks were winding down TV production for the summer, the five-month walkout
still had an effect. Overall network ratings dropped 4.6 percent that fall from
a year earlier, and many viewers began watching cable channels, which were not affected
by the strike because they showed little original programming. Overall, the
walkout was estimated to have cost Hollywood some $500 million. One enduring
effect of the strike was the increasing ubiquity of so-called “reality”
programming. As networks scrambled to fill the holes in their schedules, they
relied on such programs as Unsolved Mysteries, which began as an NBC
special but was expanded to a regular series by the network during the strike.
Fox’s unscripted police reality series COPS made its debut the following
year, and such shows would become increasingly popular during the 1990s.
Mach 8, 1993
The first episode of the animated series Beavis and
Butthead airs.
Beavis and Butthead offered
audiences rude and crude buddy humor in the tradition of The Three Stooges, Cheech and Chong, and Wayne and Garth of Saturday
Night Live and the Wayne’s World movies. The titular main characters
were two teenage boys living in the fictional town of Highland; they attended
Highland High (based on a real school in creator Mike Judge’s hometown of
Albuquerque, New Mexico) but spent most of their time eating junk food, talking
about girls and--most importantly--watching music videos. Beavis and
Butthead alternated between animated storylines and clips of actual music
videos, which Beavis and Butthead commented on in their signature bone-headed
style, punctuated by sarcastic comments and grunt-like laughter.
Judge first drew his two main characters for an animation festival, where an
MTV producer spotted them and picked up an episode for its animated showcase Liquid
Television. After signing Judge on for 65 episodes, the network began
airing the show on weeknights at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Critics were divided in
their response: Some praised Judge and MTV for effectively skewering a big part
of the network’s own core demographic--young men who watch music videos--while
others cited Beavis and Butthead’s lowest-common-denominator humor as
evidence of an overall decline in the quality of television.
Despite the mixed critical response, the show earned MTV’s highest
ratings. It also sparked a heated controversy over the influence of TV
programs on impressionable young children, especially after an incident in
1993, when a mother blamed Beavis and Butthead’s well-documented pyromaniac
tendencies for inspiring her five-year-old son to set a fire that killed his
two-year-old sister. In response to the uproar over this tragedy, MTV pulled
four episodes off the air, cut all references to fire and moved Beavis and
Butthead to the 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. time slot, claiming they were simply
targeting an older audience.
Regardless of its dubious influence on young audiences, the success of Beavis
and Butthead prompted MTV to launch a spin-off program featuring the boys’
nerdy female classmate, Daria Morgendorffer. Daria first aired in
March 1997, eight months before Beavis and Butthead ended its run. Judge
later created the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill for Fox
and directed films for the big screen, including a feature-film version of
Beavis and Butthead, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996) and the cult
hits Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy (2006).
March 10, 1978
CBS began airing the series The Incredible Hulk.
The
Incredible Hulk is an American television series
based on the Marvel Comics character The
Hulk. The series aired on the CBS television network and starred Bill
Bixby as David Banner, Lou
Ferrigno as the Hulk, and Jack
Colvin as Jack McGee.
In the TV series, Dr. David Banner, a widowed
physician and scientist, who is presumed dead, travels across America under assumed
names (his false surnames always begin with the
letter "B", but he keeps his first name), and finds himself in
positions where he helps others in need despite his terrible secret: in times
of extreme anger or stress, he transforms into a huge, incredibly strong green
creature, who has been named "The Hulk". In his travels, Banner earns
money by working temporary jobs while searching for a way to either control or
cure his condition. All the while, he is obsessively pursued by a tabloid
newspaper reporter, Jack McGee, who is convinced that the Hulk is a deadly
menace whose exposure would enhance his career.
The series' two-hour pilot movie, which established
the Hulk's origins, aired on November 4, 1977. The series' 82 episodes was
originally broadcast by CBS over five seasons from 1978 to 1982. It was
developed and produced by Kenneth Johnson,
who also wrote or directed some
episodes. The series ends with David Banner continuing to search for a cure.
In 1988, the filming rights were purchased from CBS
by rival NBC.
They produced three television
films: The Incredible Hulk Returns (directed
by Nicholas J. Corea), The Trial of the Incredible Hulk,
and The Death of the Incredible Hulk (both
directed by Bill Bixby). Since its debut, The Incredible Hulk series
has garnered a worldwide fan base.
March
11, 1818
Frankenstein
published
March
11, 1903
Lawrence Welk is born.
For
the generation that grew up on the big bands of the 30s and 40s, The
Lawrence Welk Show was a blessed island of calm in a world gone mad for
rock and roll, and it aired like clockwork every Saturday night from 1955 to
1982. But for the children and grandchildren watching along with them, it
seemed more like the "television show that time forgot." The man at
this generational flash point was an accordion-playing, Alsatian-accented
bandleader who kicked off each number with "A vun and a two" and
ended with a cheery "Wunnerful, wunnerful." Although he delighted the
older crowd, youngsters were usually not so enamored. As polarizing in his own
folksy way as Elvis Presley was in his, the inimitable Lawrence Welk—creator
and King of "Champagne Music"—was born in rural North Dakota on March 11, 1903.
Welk's
parents were immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine who spoke only German to the nine
children they raised on their farm outside Strasburg, North Dakota. In fact,
Lawrence Welk did not learn English until his early 20s, which explains the
accent that became his trademark. A dutiful son, Welk dropped out of school in
the fourth grade to work full time on the family farm, but he decided early on
that he wished to pursue a career in music. He learned to play the accordion
from his father, who carried his own antique instrument with him when he
immigrated to America. Lawrence wore out the inexpensive, mail-order accordion
bought for him as a boy, so he made a deal with his parents: In exchange for a
$400 loan to purchase a professional accordion, he would stay and work on the
family farm through the age of 21. Playing small professional gigs in the
surrounding area, Welk honed his musical skills and earned enough money to pay
his parents back when he left home for good in 1924.
By
the early 1930s, Lawrence Welk had earned
a degree in music and made a name for himself as the leader of a traveling
orchestra. He had also failed in a restaurant venture selling
"squeezeburgers" cooked on an accordion-shaped grill, but he had
succeeded in developing a unique brand as the proponent of a pleasing pop style
dubbed "Champagne Music" for its light and bubbly quality. After two
decades of success in the Midwest, Welk made his way to Los Angeles in 1951,
taking up residence with his orchestra at the Aragon Ballroom in Pacific Ocean
Park. He made his first appearance on local television the following year, and
his show was picked up by ABC in 1955. When ABC dropped The Lawrence Welk
Show in 1971, Welk independently arranged a syndication deal that kept him
on the air for another 11 years and made him one of the richest entertainers in
America. Born on this day in 1903, Lawrence Welk died at the age of 89 on May
17, 1992.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Monday, February 06, 2023
This Week in Television History: February 2023 PART II
February 8, 1928
Jack Edward Larson is born.
Actor, librettist, screenwriter and producer. He is best known for his portrayal of photographer/cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on the TV series The Adventures of Superman.
February 8, 1953
Walt Disney is featured in a one-hour special broadcast of Ed Sullivan's hit show The Toast of the Town.
The following year, Disney launched his own show, which ultimately broke Ed Sullivan's record as longest-running prime-time network program. Ed Sullivan's show ran from 1948 to 1971, but Walt Disney's show, which ran under several names, including Disneyland, Walt Disney Presents, and The Wonderful World of Disney, was on the air from 1954 to 1990, more than 10 years longer than Ed Sullivan.
February 12, 2008
Writers’ strike ends after 100 days.
Hollywood’s longest work stoppage since 1988 ends on this day in 2008, when members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) vote by a margin of more than 90 percent to go back to work after a walkout that began the previous November 5.
The writers’ strike began during the negotiation of
the WGA’s latest contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers (AMPTP), which represents over 300 production companies. Negotiations
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, cell phones 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 ad revenue for the networks. By the end, the strike was
estimated to have cost the local L.A. 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 favorite shows, as networks dealt with the shutdown of
production by loading the schedule with reruns and increased amounts of reality
programming (such as a revamped version of the 1990s hit American Gladiators).
Negotiators reached a tentative agreement on February
8, and both the East Coast and West Coast branches of the WGA ratified the deal
on February 10. Two days later, the writers themselves approved the truce, and
a new contract with the AMPTP was signed February 25. 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 programs
streamed online (at a much higher rate than that paid for DVDs) and formalized
union jurisdiction over programming created for the Web. Writers would be paid
for shows streamed on advertising-supported Web sites and WGA members hired to
write original content for the Web would be covered under a union contract.
Though labor experts and WGA supporters heralded the
outcome as an important victory for the striking writers, the contract included
several key concessions. Studios could hire non-union writers to work on
low-budget Internet shows, for example, and no residuals would be paid to
writers for repeat shows viewed online within a few weeks after the original
show aired on television. The strike also failed to win the union jurisdiction
over the ever-more-important realms of reality programming and animation.
Still, in an email message to East and West Coast
writers groups quoted in the New York Times, Patric M. Verrone,
president of the West Coast guild, and Michael Winship, his East Coast
counterpart, stressed the positive ending to the 2007-08 writers’ strike: “Much
has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all
that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike
has been a success.”
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
Monday, February 12, 2018
This Week in Television History: February 2017 PART II
 |
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history,
the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
February 12, 2008
Writers’
strike ends after 100 days.
Hollywood’s
longest work stoppage since 1988 ends on this day in 2008, when members of the
Writers Guild of America (WGA) vote by a margin of more than 90 percent to go
back to work after a walkout that began the previous November 5.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
Monday, October 30, 2017
This Week in Television History: October 2017 PART V
|
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history,
the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
November 2, 1992
Hal Roach
dies. Producer, director, and
screenwriter Hal Roach dies at the age of 100. Roach is best remembered for his
silent comedies featuring Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, and the gaggle of
mischievous kids who starred in the "Our Gang" comedies (who later
became known as the Little Rascals).
The silent-film maker,
born in Elmira, New York, had worked as a mule skinner, stunt man, truck
driver, and Alaska gold prospector when he came to Hollywood in the early
1900s. He started out as a stunt man and bit-part actor, then formed his own
production company with D. Whiting, called The Rolin Company, after he
inherited $3,000 in 1915 (he later bought Whiting out and changed the studio's
name to Hal Roach Studios).
Roach hired Harold Lloyd
to play Willie Work in a series of comic shorts he hoped to produce. The series
fell through until Roach changed Willie Work's name to Lonesome Luke, who
became a much-beloved movie character known as "the man with the
glasses." Regulars in the comic series, called "Phun-Philms,"
included Will Rogers, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.
In the 1920s, Roach
started making feature films and dramas along with the comedies and westerns
that had occupied the bulk of his energy earlier in his career. He weeded out
the least-popular shows and concentrated on his gems, including the Laurel and
Hardy and Our Gang series. Actors who worked under Hal Roach contracts early in
their careers included Jean Harlow, Mickey Rooney, and Zasu Pitts, along with
directors Norman Z. McLeod, Leo McCarey, and George Stevens.
Roach
won Oscars for two shorts, The Music Box in 1932 and Bored of
Education in 1936. When he shifted his focus to feature-length movies (in
partnership with his son, Hal Roach Jr.), he sold the Our Gang rights to MGM
and produced the acclaimed film Of Mice and Men, an adaptation of John
Steinbeck's novel about a sweet, developmentally disabled man named Lennie and
his protector, George. In the 1940s, he turned his attention from the big
screen to television production. A military colonel, Roach produced propaganda
and training films for the armed forces during World War II, and when he
returned to Hollywood after the war, he began working in television. His
company collapsed in the 1950s, but in the 1960s he produced The Crazy World
of Laurel and Hardy. The film proved to be his swan song: His studio was
demolished in 1963 (a housing development is on Roach Ranch now). He received
an honorary Academy Award in 1983 for his contributions to making movies. He
died in 1992 at age 100.
November 4, 1937
Loretta Jane Swit is
born.
Stage and television actress known for her character roles. Swit is best known for her portrayal of Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H.
November 5, 2007
Writers strike stalls
production of TV shows, movies.
Members of the Writers Guild
of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West—labor organizations
representing television, film and radio writers—go on strike in Los Angeles and New York after
negotiations break down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers (AMPTP), a trade group that represents TV and film producers in the United States,
including CBS, NBC Universal, Walt Disney Company, Paramount Pictures, News
Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and Warner Brothers. The strike caused
production to shut down on more than 60 TV shows and resulted in a loss of $3
billion, by some estimates, to the Los Angeles economy alone.
The strike’s key issues included the writers’ demand
for a larger share of DVD revenues and payment for films and TV shows
distributed over the Internet and other forms of new media. Late-night talk shows,
which used guild writers, were immediately affected by the strike and went into
reruns. Production also shut down on many prime-time comedies and dramas;
however, some had stockpiled completed programming and were able to avoid going
straight into reruns.
After a series of stalemated discussions, leaders from
both sides eventually reached a tentative agreement, and on February 12, 2008,
WGA members voted to end the strike and go back to work. The strike officially
ended on February 26, when WGA members overwhelmingly approved a new three-year
contract with the AMPTP.
The impact of the writers’ walkout was felt across the
entertainment industry, from actors to caterers to editors to set designers to
animal wranglers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the chief
economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation estimated
the strike resulted in a loss to the local economy of more than $3 billion. The
Times article stated: “Of that total, an estimated $772 million came
from lost wages for writers and production workers, $981 million from various
businesses that service the industry, including caterers and equipment rental
houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as
much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.”
Previous multiple-month strikes launched by Writers
Guild members in 1960 and 1988 had also greatly impacted the entertainment
industry, bringing TV and movie production to a standstill and costing millions
in revenue.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned Tony Figueroa |
Monday, March 04, 2013
This Week in Television History: March 2013 PART I
Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
March 7, 1988
Writers Guild of America strike begins.
After rejecting what the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said was a final offer, representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called a strike for all the union’s members to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific Time.
The origins of the strike went back to late 1987, when
producers began demanding that writers accept a sliding scale on residuals--payment
received when work is re-broadcast after its original airing--from domestic
syndicated reruns of one-hour shows, claiming that syndication prices had
dropped. Writers balked at this restriction; they also wanted a bigger share of
foreign rights and more creative control over the scripts they were writing.
With negotiations stalled, the current contract between the AMPTP and the WGA
expired at midnight on March 1, and the strike began a week later.
Some companies got around the strike by signing
interim deals with the WGA, including Carsey-Werner Co., producers of The
Cosby Show, who were able to continue production on a new sitcom, Roseanne,
which shot to No. 2 in the ratings that season. Near the end of July, after the
writers rejected a settlement, the entertainment lawyer Ken Ziffren stepped in
to run interference between the two sides of the conflict. Along with the
producers’ chief negotiator, Nick Counter, Ziffren got both producers and
writers to modify their positions in time for a meeting in early August at the
headquarters of the AMPTP in Sherman Oaks, California. Sixteen hours
later, the strike was over, after the two sides struck a deal by which
producers upped the payment for foreign rights and writers agreed to the
sliding scale on syndication residuals.
Though it came at a relatively opportune time, as the
networks were winding down TV production for the summer, the five-month walkout
still had an effect. Overall network ratings dropped 4.6 percent that fall from
a year earlier, and many viewers began watching cable channels, which were not
affected by the strike because they showed little original programming.
Overall, the walkout was estimated to have cost Hollywood some $500 million.
One enduring effect of the strike was the increasing ubiquity of so-called
“reality” programming. As networks scrambled to fill the holes in their
schedules, they relied on such programs as Unsolved Mysteries, which
began as an NBC special but was expanded to a regular series by the network
during the strike. Fox’s unscripted police reality series COPS made its
debut the following year, and such shows would become increasingly popular
during the 1990s.
Mach 8, 1993
The first episode of the animated series Beavis and
Butthead airs.
Beavis and Butthead offered audiences rude and crude buddy humor in the tradition of The Three Stooges, Cheech and Chong, and Wayne and Garth of Saturday Night Live and the Wayne’s World movies. The titular main characters were two teenage boys living in the fictional town of Highland; they attended Highland High (based on a real school in creator Mike Judge’s hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico) but spent most of their time eating junk food, talking about girls and--most importantly--watching music videos. Beavis and Butthead alternated between animated storylines and clips of actual music videos, which Beavis and Butthead commented on in their signature bone-headed style, punctuated by sarcastic comments and grunt-like laughter.
Despite the mixed critical response, the show earned MTV’s highest ratings. It also sparked a heated controversy over the influence of TV programs on impressionable young children, especially after an incident in 1993, when a mother blamed Beavis and Butthead’s well-documented pyromaniac tendencies for inspiring her five-year-old son to set a fire that killed his two-year-old sister. In response to the uproar over this tragedy, MTV pulled four episodes off the air, cut all references to fire and moved Beavis and Butthead to the 10:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. time slot, claiming they were simply targeting an older audience.
Regardless of its dubious influence on young audiences, the success of Beavis and Butthead prompted MTV to launch a spin-off program featuring the boys’ nerdy female classmate, Daria Morgendorffer. Daria first aired in March 1997, eight months before Beavis and Butthead ended its run. Judge later created the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill for Fox and directed films for the big screen, including a feature-film version of Beavis and Butthead, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996) and the cult hits Office Space (1999) and Idiocracy (2006).
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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