Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Game Show News

As we mentioned not long ago, the Game Show Network is shuffling its Black-and-White Overnight bloc. The only dangling mystery from that report was what would replace the reruns of What's My Line? that they've now been through at least twice.

'Tis a mystery no longer. The replacement for What's My Line? will be...What's My Line? Reruns of Play Your Hunch will be in that slot for a week or two, then GSN will start running What's My Line? again, starting with the very first episode from February of 1950.

That takes care of the second half of the Black-and-White Overnight hour. In the first half, reruns of Password are currently airing weekdays with the world's worst game show, Beat the Clock, airing on weekends. On September 27, Password gets replaced by The Name's the Same, which was a not-bad show that originally aired from 1951 to 1955. It's often a good deal of fun, especially during the period Carl Reiner was on the panel, but it often suffered from very blatant "gambitting." That was the practice on some game shows of the period of setting up the panelists with questions that seemed innocent but were riotously funny if you knew the secret they were trying to guess. Like if they had to guess that the contestant's product was steer manure, the producers would not tell the panelists the answer but they'd have one of them ask, "Is this something I might have all over my living room?" It often got pretty obvious but the shows are worth watching, nonetheless. We're hoping they can dig up some from the season when it was hosted by Bob and Ray.

• Posted at 4:29 PM · LINK

The State of the Union

Mark Thorson, who is one of my band of loyal readers who instantly catches my every typo, writes to ask...

By the way, I may have failed to notice it, but a few months ago you had some articles on a possible impending Writer's Guild strike, and I don't remember that being followed up by an explanation of how that was resolved. Is it still impending or has the danger passed?

Rather amazingly — because no one in the industry would ever have imagined either side would allow this to occur — the Writers Guild is working without a contract and it has been since the old one expired May 1. Under the old "paradigm" (to use a noun that seems to be in vogue these days), we would have gone on strike soon after the expiration and/or the producers would have threatened to lock us out if we did not accept their "final offer." (I put that in quotes because...well, you know why I put that in quotes.) Neither a strike nor a lockout has happened. In fact, the WGA hasn't even taken a strike authorization vote. The leaders of the WGA decided to just go on, keeping the town and everyone working, waiting to see what would happen. The producers either haven't been able to get a lockout vote among its members — who must agree unanimously if there is to be a lockout — or they've decided to wait and force the issue at a moment that seems more advantageous to them. Smart money has it that they won't wait too long. If it gets around towards the middle of next year, that's when the current contracts expire for the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America.

It has long been presumed that the studios' worst nightmare would be for the three above-the-line guilds to link arms and make joint demands at the same time. It's always seemed easier to beat one union (usually ours) into submission and rollbacks, then go on to the next. The bloody negotiation or strike intimidates the other unions and the producers then argue that "pattern bargaining" dictates that the other unions accept the same rollbacks. So logic and custom would suggest that in the next month or three, at a point where it would no longer disrupt the Fall TV schedule, the producers will press the issue with the WGA. This would, they hope, give them a momentum of union-stomping before they have to face SAG and the DGA. On the other hand, logic and custom would have dictated that we'd never go this long without a contract. So we're all in uncharted waters here and all we can do is hope for the best, brace for the worst and expect something in-between.

• Posted at 4:00 PM · LINK

Holiday for Possums

Know what today is? Okay, right, Wednesday. But this particular Wednesday marks 91 years since the birthing day of Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. He wasn't much of an artist then but before long, he grew up to become one of the most honored, quoted cartoonists of all time. Those who know Pogo love Pogo and those who don't know Pogo...well, they don't know Pogo. Which is their loss. They've missed out on the best damn comic strip any newspaper ever offered its readers. But don't pity those folks...at least not today. Today, go out and hug a swamp critter, say something witty, sing a happy song and think about Walt Kelly. Even folks who never met him miss him.

• Posted at 3:00 AM · LINK

August 26, 2004 • Current • August 24, 2004