In late 2007, \u201cHow I Met Your Mother\u201d co-creator Craig Thomas faced an unusual situation. After penning the script for Episode 11 of the CBS comedy\u2019s third season alongside fellow creator Carter Bays, he found himself handing off the pages they\u2019d written. The scenes were to be filmed without his presence on set\u00a0\u2014 or any of his writing staff, for that matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The organizations were in the midst of negotiating a new three-year contract. But after the AMPTP, the trade association affiliated with corporations like CBS and NBCUniversal, failed to meet the demands of the guilds, writers embarked on a 100-day stalemate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In total, the strike\u00a0cost the state of California<\/a>\u00a0over $2 billion and 37,700 jobs, according to nonprofit economic think tank the Milken Institute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But there were larger interests at stake.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Audiences used to watching movies in theaters and TV at designated times in their homes were getting acquainted with a new kind of viewing experience: streaming video. Industry experts at the time predicted that so-called \u201cnew media\u201d content \u2015 shows and movies distributed online or viewed on computers, cell phones and other devices \u2015 would eventually supplant DVDs in terms of profits. (Spoiler alert: They did.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Initially, the big studios \u2015 MGM, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney, among others \u2015 took home most, if not all, of the profits of this \u201cnew media\u201d content; the WGA had no formal agreement with the companies on how to compensate writers for this kind of online or on-demand distribution. So when it came time to renegotiate a contract in November 2007, this issue was key.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to\u00a0the WGA<\/span><\/a>, the AMPTP began negotiations by offering paltry residuals for new media and expressed a desire to deny the guilds future jurisdiction over scripts written for the internet.\u00a0And the group felt as though it had no choice but to strike.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was one of the most important strikes of the new century to date,\u201d Lowell Peterson, executive director of the WGA East, told HuffPost. Although Peterson was not a part of the WGA East until after the strike ended, he was interviewing for the role of director during the walkout and was in communication with leadership throughout the entire process. He witnessed the picketing firsthand and considers the strike to be \u201cthe first major labor action of the digital age.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis was a bunch of employees confronting the impact of information technology and digital technology on their way of living, and that was something that resonated very deeply across the labor force and the labor movement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The strike officially ended on Feb. 12, 2008.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0The guilds won a piece of digital revenues and established a percentage payment on the distributor\u2019s gross, and shows like \u201cHIMYM\u201d resumed with their writing staff in tact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOur perception was that it was very successful,\u201d Peterson explained. \u201cThat as a result of the strike, the guilds were able to win jurisdiction and residual payment terms that otherwise simply wouldn\u2019t exist. It looked like a great victory.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But, it wasn\u2019t an easy road. Not only had writers been out of work, they\u2019d returned to an industry indelibly changed by their fight.<\/p>\n While scripted television series were forced to take a hiatus during the strike, this was not the case for reality TV shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once pre-strike commissioned episodes ran out and fictional series were on lockdown, broadcast and cable networks clamored for any original content they could find to fill their schedules. As a result, some\u00a0industry watchdogs<\/span><\/a>\u00a0connect the writers strike with the boom of reality television, considering more than 100 unscripted shows \u2015\u00a0from competition shows to dating shows to life improvement series<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2015 either debuted or returned during that 2007-2008\u00a0season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However,\u00a0Eli Holzman, the current CEO of The Intellectual Property Corporation and the creator\/developer behind series like \u201cProject Greenlight,\u201d \u201cUndercover Boss\u201d and \u201cProject Runway,\u201d has a slightly different take on the strike\u2019s impact on reality TV. He believes the explosion of unscripted television in 2008 was a long time in the making.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNonscripted TV was on the march really from the early 2000s, with the advent of \u2018Survivor,\u2019 \u2018Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?\u2019 and \u2018Big Brother,\u2019\u201d Holzman explained. \u201cThe genre came into its own and it mirrored the trajectory and growth of cable, and commissioning increased each year. Yes, the strike was one important factor in that. But to me, slightly less important than the growth of cable and the audience\u2019s embrace of the genre.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Holzman described it, scripted television was in the doldrums beginning in the mid-aughts. Viewers, he said, were bored with the slog of too-similar sitcoms, cop dramas and medical shows. From 2005 to 2007, for example, \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d reigned supreme while the high-rated \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy,\u201d \u201cCSI: Crime Scene Investigation\u201d and \u201cHouse\u201d\u00a0eventually slipped below<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cDancing with the Stars.\u201d According to Holzman, audiences craved a fresh start. Cue the rise in reality television projects, which hit their stride in the 2000s. They peaked in 2015, when 750 nonfiction programs (350 of them brand new<\/span><\/a>) aired on cable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSuddenly, this genre \u2014 Oh my god, all these people are going to get left on an island with nothing and they have to vote each other off, and someone is going to win a million dollars? \u2015 was new and different and we wanted new and different versus a copy of a copy of a copy,\u201d Holzman said. \u201cThe strike is an easy moment to look at when suddenly we all became aware of a change that was going on that maybe we hadn\u2019t noticed before. But that change was happening on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n WGA East\u2019s Peterson agrees with him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI would not say that reality TV was created by the writers strike. I would say that more people watched it because there was nothing else on,\u201d he added, noting that reality TV was simply \u201cthe only alternative, other than reruns,\u201d for networks to air in lieu of their regularly scheduled programming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still, Holzman admits the strike did help to advance certain reality programs. \u201cProject Runway,\u201d for instance, aired its fourth season from November 2007 to March 2008 and\u00a0earned pretty solid ratings<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for Bravo. The finale roped in 6.1 million viewers in the 18-49 demo when Christian Siriano won. Later in 2008,\u00a0Lifetime took over the series<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and ratings increased by nearly 30 percent. Episodes of NBC\u2019s \u201cBiggest Loser\u201d moved from a one-hour slot to two in order to fill primetime space. CBS aired its first, and last,\u00a0\u201cBig Brother\u201d winter season<\/span><\/a>. \u201cKeeping Up with the Kardashians\u201d\u00a0began its reign<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on E! \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d\u00a0capped off a historic season<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in May 2008 with 31.7 million finale viewers, helping Fox become America\u2019s most-watched network for the first time ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAs the strike wore on, the [reality] business was robust,\u201d Holzman reiterated. \u201cAs a typical Hollywood producer, I thought I was just really talented [Laughs<\/em>]. I didn\u2019t realize I was potentially riding a wave. I thought, \u2018I\u2019m so good at this! This is so easy!\u2019 That was genuinely my impression, and I didn\u2019t realize we were in the midst of what was going to be a boom.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, when guild writers returned to work, reality TV was no longer just a cloying trend. Thomas admitted that, as a scripted TV showrunner, it wasn\u2019t easy to watch reality programs top the ratings week after week from there on out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI remember being really stressed out in the first couple of years of \u2018How I Met Your Mother\u2019 because we were losing to a reality show all the sudden,\u201d Thomas recalled. \u201cThat show \u2018Deal or No Deal\u2019 was this huge sensation and we were like, \u2018Oh man, we\u2019re losing to suitcases of money being opened up!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n There were other long-term effects of the strike, though, not just for veteran writers, but aspiring ones, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n About 20 years ago \u2015 a decade before the writers strike \u2015 a handful of these promising writers\u2019 assistants, or \u201cbaby writers\u201d as they were sometimes called, were working with Holzman at Miramax Television on a Kevin Williamson project called \u201cWasteland.\u201d The show, about a group of post-college pals, aired only three episodes in 1999 before ABC canceled it. But out of that particular wasteland came a crucial opportunity. Since the studio heads were still required to fulfill the 13-episode order for foreign buyers but no longer felt pressure to deliver top-level content, aspiring young writers were given the chance to pen the remaining scripts for the series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe were in a blowout game where you take the kids off the bench and you put them in because it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d Holzman told HuffPost. \u201cOne of those writers\u2019 assistants was Damon Lindelof, who would go on to create \u2018Lost\u2019 and has obviously had an extraordinary career. Here\u2019s a voice that, because of that flourishing ecosystem, was able to be identified, nurtured and grown, and his writing was then brought to all of us: the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unfortunately, the months of foot-dragging from AMPTP negotiators in 2007-2008 messed with that flourishing ecosystem, Holzman says, dismantling a once healthy community that fostered creators of all ranks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAs the strike and the decline in commissioning wore on, the people who maybe had previously been a rung or two up the ladder were willing to take a job and come back at a lower level, a lower rate. If you\u2019re running a show and have to staff it, you have the ability to hire a kid who\u2019s promising but never done it before\u00a0or<\/em>\u00a0someone who\u2019s really competent and is going to take a pay cut to work at that level. You\u2019re almost crazy not to hire that more seasoned person. So, that baby writer pathway into the business went away,\u201d he said, \u201cand that was tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then-\u201cbaby writer\u201d Nick Bernardone, however, was one of the lucky ones. \u201cI got my first job as an office production assistant on \u201930 Rock\u2019 [in 2008]\u00a0by literally walking into the office at the exact right time and asking if they needed someone. It was one in a million timing,\u201d he told HuffPost. \u201cThe answer was something like, \u2018Usually, this would be insane … but can you start tomorrow?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n After working alongside the likes of Tina Fey, Bernardone went on to become a member of the writers\u2019 room on her Netflix series, \u201cUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.\u201d He insists he wouldn\u2019t have gotten the gig had he not worked similar jobs on shows like AMC\u2019s \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and Netflix\u2019s \u201cBloodline\u201d in the interim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thomas and Bays also entered the business relatively easily. They were hired as writers for David Letterman just a few months after graduating from Wesleyan University in 1997, well before the strike. And they opted to pay it forward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThrough the run of \u2018How I Met Your Mother,\u2019 we promoted several of our writers\u2019 assistants, mostly post-strike,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of them was Matt Kuhn, who ended up being a writer on the show for the entire rest of the run after a couple of seasons as a writers\u2019 assistant. We did the same thing with Craig Gerard and our personal assistant, Matt Zinman \u2015 we promoted them to be full writers on the show for many years. And in the last couple seasons we promoted George Sloan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These days, Bernardone, who\u2019s been nominated for four Emmy awards, believes breaking into the business is all about who\u2019s willing to give you a slice of the pie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf someone likes an aspiring writer\u2019s stuff, they\u2019ll do their best to get them hired,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As unreliable as it might be, it\u2019s a practice Holzman believes is necessary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important to nurture a new crop, a new generation of storytellers every year, because it takes a long time to get there and it takes a long time to learn your craft,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a bad year for grapes \u2014 in 10 years, we won\u2019t have that vintage.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the birth of the reality television boom and\u00a0the increase\u00a0in obstacles for up-and-coming writers, the strike ushered in an era that the guilds and industry insiders always expected: the era of streaming TV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2007, Netflix was on an upswing. The company had launched in 1998 as a mail-order competitor to the then-popular but ultimately terminal Blockbuster, which rented out VHS tapes, DVDs and video games to the masses largely via brick-and-mortar stores. By 2005, 35,000 different films were available through Netflix\u2019s\u00a0subscription service;\u00a0they reportedly shipped out 1 million DVDs<\/span><\/a>\u00a0every day. But soon enough, Netflix went the way of the internet, allowing its subscribers to browse through and watch films and shows by streaming them straight to their devices. By 2008, it had already identified its video-on-demand platform as the future. By 2013, Netflix had 27.1 streaming customers in the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/img.huffingtonpost.com\/asset\/5a81b2131e00002c007ab6e0.jpeg?ops=scalefit_970_noupscale\")
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<\/p>\nThe Rising Tide Of Reality TV<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/p>\nThe \u2018Death\u2019 Of The Baby Writer<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Streaming Pathway To Prestige TV<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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