Strike 2, and Actors, Studios May Be Out This Time Around

April 1, 2008 — -- Actors' strike!

It would be nice to follow that jolt with "April Fools," particularly now that scripted shows are finally returning. Unfortunately, and despite the damage caused by the writers' strike, an even more damaging actors' strike is a possibility. That doesn't mean a strike is probable -- there's plenty of time and incentive to reach a settlement before the actors' contract expires June 30.

But before greed, stubbornness or stupidity set in, actors and studios might ponder some lessons from the last strike, before they're forced to relearn them:

For viewers, it's all or nothing. Scripted series never disappeared during the strike. What vanished was people's willingness to search them out. Ratings sank for new episodes of favorite shows and never materialized for debuting ones. There's a critical mass to broadcast TV, based on viewers' expectation that networks will provide multiple prime-time choices. Force people to search out the few new shows in a sea of repeats, and they just go elsewhere, or nowhere at all.

People watch what they like, not just what's on. The networks responded to the strike as if it gave them carte blanche to air anything at all, figuring a desperate nation would watch. As NBC learned from the failure of "Quarterlife," the drama it briefly imported from the Web, bad is bad whenever it airs -- and is likely to flop, strike or no strike. And as all the networks learned from the lack of attention paid to such reality flotsam as "Clash of the Choirs," "Amnesia," "Power of 10," "My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad" and "Crowned," the world needs only so much reality.

Left on their own, networks will fix what isn't broken and break what's fixed. Apparently, the lesson some executives have learned is that the time has come to dump the traditional fall launch, with competing slates of new shows all arriving in September. Bean-counters would rather spread the shows and their costs through the season, arguing that bunching them together is old-fashioned and inefficient.

It is. It also created one of our most potent pop culture traditions, an event that focuses attention on the five major networks from May's schedule announcements to September. Some shows get lost in the mix, but most get found, because people have been trained to look for them -- and are often excited by the prospect. Anyone who would destroy that tradition for the sake of cost-cutting efficiency should be in a business other than show.

Nobody won last time, and no one will win this time. Both sides will tell you they were fighting for the future -- the producers for the industry's long-range health, the writers for a fair share of Internet profits. Let's hope that's true, because the money lost in the present is gone for good. It looks like the strike ended before any permanent damage was done. But bring the industry to a stop again, sacrifice the fall season to some illusory future goal, and odds are all those future writers, actors and producers will be less than grateful. Make. A. Deal.