Will the Writers' Strike Solve Anything?

By James Poniewozik

On monday, TV and movie writers walked off the job, demanding a cut of the proceeds when their work appears on the Web. The same day, viral-video site Break.com invited striking writers to enter a short-movie contest, the winner to receive $5,000 (and everyone else to get, um, the pleasure of uploading their work). "We get close to 1.5 million guys watching over 12,000 videos on our site every day," the site boasted. "They could be watching yours!"

From unpaid Web work to mostly unpaid Web work -- it's an irony they might have made up on 30 Rock, if anyone were writing 30 Rock anymore. Instead, its creator, Tina Fey, was walking a picket line in midtown Manhattan. "These companies clearly smell that the Internet is where their future profits are coming from," she told TIME. "If you look at nbc breaking off with iTunes and trying to start their own thing and raise the price, it's because they know this is where the money's going to be."

In practical terms, the strike is about money: how much, if anything, writers get as the Internet and DVDs replace TV reruns, for which they get bigger residuals. But in a larger sense, the studios and writers are forcing a question that every other form of media is facing: How much is content worth in the digital age?

If the strike drags on, neither side may like the answer. The 1988 strike lasted five months, but TV didn't have to compete with the Internet or Netflix, and Tetris wasn't quite so involving as Halo 3. (Movies are less affected because they have a bigger backlog of scripts.)

Essentially, both sides are betting on who's more disposable: the content providers or the medium. The writers' gamble is that, deprived of Heroes and 'Til Death, enough viewers will disappear to put a hurt on their bosses. (And yet when the strike ends, people will rush back gratefully to see their work again.) The producers are betting that viewers will be satisfied with reruns and reality -- hey, TV's TV! -- and the writers will have to fold; CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told investors, "We are fully prepared to offer alternative-programming options."

Put another way, the networks and studios are making the depressing bet that "quality" -- i.e., original scripts -- doesn't matter that much to the market. But who's to say they're wrong? Media consumers are deluged with diversions, many of them free. Even the New York Times couldn't get enough subscribers to sustain a paid online-subscription plan.

Movies and TV at least have a product people are willing to pay for, on DVD, online and in downloads. But in a market with more competitors, from World of Warcraft to that Miss Teen USA chick on YouTube, writers may need to dial down their expectations, and executives, their arrogance. Like news anchors and magazine writers, they no longer have the captive audiences or exalted places they once had, when Americans sat on the couch for prime time as though it were mandated in the Constitution. If they close down Capistrano for too long, the swallows might not all come back. The danger isn't anger; it's apathy.

Ironically, the first shows forced into reruns -- like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Late Night with Conan O'Brien -- draw the young viewers TV has had the hardest time keeping. (The shows may return early, heavy on interviews and light on gags.) For these fans, TV is just one option in a big digital menu. Without an army of Cyranos to write Jon's, Stephen's and Conan's jokes, those viewers could find watching them an easy habit to break. No, they won't quit TV altogether. But they'll be glad to ditch their shakier TV commitments and click over to MySpace or Second Life. And the advertisers will gladly follow.

Yet the producers and writers continue playing chicken on a railroad track, with you as the oncoming train. Maybe they'll be right after all, and at the end of the strike, the nation will fall in love with TV all over again. And if they're wrong? Well, there's always Break.com.