TV on Strike Why Hollywood Went to War over the Internet
Cynthia Littleton
Cloth $29.95
| 978-0-8156-1008-3
| 2012
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"Every day Cynthia shows us how smart and well informed she is with her reporting. What we didn’t know is just how compelling a storyteller she is! If you are in the entertainment industry or aspire to be this book is a MUST READ page turner. The players come to life and the events of the Writer’s strike provide the prism for Cynthia’s explanation of how the entire entertainment eco-system really works. In the lightning fast constantly changing entertainment universe this book helps us to understand ‘why’ and ‘how’ it is all happening. Bravo Cynthia!"—Warren Littlefield, TV producer, past President NBC Entertainment
"The author has offered a detailed, thorough and unbiased report and analysis of the themes and events that pushed the entertainment industry into an unwanted but unavoidable labor dispute which will have ramifications on the industry for decades"—Robert Broder, Vice Chairman of International Creative
Cynthia Littleton on Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
Cynthia Littleton is deputy editor at Variety and coauthor of Season Finale: The
Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN.
TV on Strike examines the 2007 upheaval in the entertainment industry
by telling the inside story of the hundred-day writers’ strike that crippled
Hollywood. The television industry’s uneasy transition to the digital age
was the driving force behind the most significant labor dispute of the
twenty-first century.
The strike put a spotlight on how the advent of new-media distribution
platforms is reshaping the traditional business models that have governed
the entertainment business for decades. The uncertainty that sent writers
out into the streets of Los Angeles and New York with picket signs laid
bare the depth of the divide, after years of industry consolidation, between
the handful of media barons who rule Hollywood and the writers
whose works support the industry.
With both sides afraid of losing millions in future profits, a critical
communication breakdown spurred a brief but fierce fight with repercussions
that continue today. The saga of the Writers Guild of America strike
is told here as seen through the eyes of key players on both sides of the
negotiating table and of the foot soldiers who shocked even themselves
with the strength of their resolve to fight for their rights in the face of an
ambiguous future.
