TMC
06-05-2023, 08:33 PM
https://www.vulture.com/2023/05/what-happens-to-tv-if-theres-a-2023-wga-writers-strike.html
Soap operas have an arsenal of episodes at their disposal. Many, if not most, are filmed months in advance, leaving the genre with an enviable stockpile before it runs out of new episodes. Days of Our Lives has content going into the fall, while General Hospital has about a month left of prerecorded melodrama. The Young and the Restless will likely be the first to pause, with less than a month of episodes remaining. Writers and producers who aren’t in the WGA can still make the soaps based on plot sketches. During the previous strike, soaps mostly stayed on (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/arts/television/21soap.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share) owing to a combination of prerecorded episodes and the efforts of writers in the guild’s “financial core” — a government designation allowing writers to resign from the union to work while receiving contractual benefits. It wasn’t good vibes all around, though. The WGA called out writers who had intentionally left the guild, sought fi-core status, and kept working despite the stoppage after the strike ended. TL;DR: Soap-opera fans need not despair.
Soap operas have an arsenal of episodes at their disposal. Many, if not most, are filmed months in advance, leaving the genre with an enviable stockpile before it runs out of new episodes. Days of Our Lives has content going into the fall, while General Hospital has about a month left of prerecorded melodrama. The Young and the Restless will likely be the first to pause, with less than a month of episodes remaining. Writers and producers who aren’t in the WGA can still make the soaps based on plot sketches. During the previous strike, soaps mostly stayed on (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/arts/television/21soap.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share) owing to a combination of prerecorded episodes and the efforts of writers in the guild’s “financial core” — a government designation allowing writers to resign from the union to work while receiving contractual benefits. It wasn’t good vibes all around, though. The WGA called out writers who had intentionally left the guild, sought fi-core status, and kept working despite the stoppage after the strike ended. TL;DR: Soap-opera fans need not despair.