Late night gives up on doing reruns

I see from CNN that the striking writers are mad that the late night talk show hosts have decided to roll the dice and go back on the air. See Strikers hit Leno with criticism for punchlines. Apparently these late night hosts (probably with some prodding from their bosses and sponsors) have remembered the simple maxim "you don't get paid if you don't work."

This article struck me as funny and I am tempted to invoke the "I told you so" argument based on my prediction of this very event a few weeks back. As this strike has basically ended most of my television watching for the spring (which probably has added benefits anyway), for now I will simply rest on my original point that these strikers may be striking themselves out of a job.

As one of my non-law school/lawyer friends pointed out rather astutely, what is to stop the networks from getting some poor college student (or students) to work on writing a pilot for a few thousand bucks. Granted, I know how this wrecks the economics of the real world to some degree, but greedy college students will gobble this up, and probably not realize what they are actually giving up and who they are hurting until it is too late. But regardless if their show becomes the next best thing or tanks in the test market, it's a feather on the cap that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Personally, I can't wait to see what new crap gets spewed out in the next great drama series on any of the major networks thanks to new writers who decide not to join the union. It certainly can't be any worse than some of the ideas these union writers come up with over the past couple years.

I just wonder how long it is before some college drama professor decides to take his (or her) class into a new direction and with the aid of a site like YouTube, create something actually worth watching on tv. The better question I have is whether the effects of this strike will make people realize how much time they waste watching tv (myself included). Only time will tell how much of an effect this strike will have on the general television watching population. At least there's still reality tv....

Tags: leno writes own monologues, late night tv says to hell with the strikers, we can write this crap ourselves