The Clarity Moment

IT'S FUNNY JUST how different a TV series is from a movie. I'm starting to think I understand why TV evolved toward the writer-showrunner model, while writers on features continue to be tossed overboard almost on whim.

With a feature, you're all moving toward one product. The script is chunking, chunking along toward that inevitable start date or greenlight. If you've got a greenlight, it has way more to do with actor or director availability than with that document; the temptation to keep turning over, piling on writers and sucking what you can out of them would be unavoidable, I think.

On the other hand, on TV, adding more writers on top of each other doesn't help. Because you're not rushing headlong to that one story. You're instead building a system of parameters. A storytelling engine from which multiple stories can spring -- stories that seem enough alike that it feels like the same show, but not so alike that it seems repetitve. Oh, and you have to be economical, too. You can't just throw money at the problem like you can in a big budget movie.

In those early days, behind the scenes there's a ticking clock that has nothing to do with what's in the scripts. This ticking clock boils down to, "can we figure out this template and get scripts moving out there before production realities start bearing down on you?" If you can, you win. You've broken the back of the series. If you can't, you flail. And everyone who watches your first few episodes will know you're flailing.

Bionic Woman, this fall? Definite flailer. Flailer shows can find themselves in the room - it's not necessarily a death sentence. Smallville had a rough start, with a bunch of eps that were only kryptonite monster of the week eps that quickly became the law of diminishing returns. But by midway through their first season, they'd righted their ship and found the way to get to six seasons (and counting.)

One of the knocks you often hear about Canadian shows (or if not a knock, then a lament...) is "too bad. It got good around Ep 8." When you're doing a 13 episode order, of course, and your promo, anemic as it is, is all front-loaded, that's frequently too little too late. But it's also true. I remember being amazed to tune in a later episode of Eleventh Hour (a CTV drama from a few years back) and being amazed that it was a pretty good story. I'd long since stopped watching it. I watched an ep of Da Kink in My Hair last week, and thought the same thing.

The thing that separates shows that find their way fast from ones that find their way too late -- or not at all, I think, is when they have what I call, "The Clarity Moment."

It comes on in different ways, and through different routes -- but the funny thing about the clarity moment is that you all recognize it. All the writers light up and go, "Yes! Yes! That's the show." It's the moment when flipping through the bible stops and where the most important blueprint for the show is no longer the pilot -- but instead is something living, breathing, and hanging in the air of the writers room. And the reason why you know you're there is -- everybody gets it.

Well, I don't know if everyone's come on side yet -- but I think the 2007 WGA Strike may have just reached a clarity moment.

From the New York Times:

Letterman Seeks Deal With Writers’ Union

By BILL CARTER and MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: December 16, 2007
In what may be the first break in the entertainment writers’ strike, David Letterman is pursuing a deal with the Writers Guild of America that would allow his late-night show on CBS to return to the air in early January with the usual complement of material from his writers, even if the strike is still continuing.

Executives from Mr. Letterman’s production company said Saturday that they were hopeful they would have an interim agreement in place with the guild as early as this week. That could potentially put Mr. Letterman at an enormous advantage over most of his late-night colleagues.

Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central has also been urging an interim agreement and would begin working toward getting one in place on Monday morning, according to a representative. But Mr. Letterman is in a stronger position because, unlike Mr. Stewart, his show is not owned by the network but by Mr. Letterman’s independent production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated. (So is the show that follows it on CBS, “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” which would return with writers under the proposed interim agreement.) The news of Mr. Letterman’s potential deal came at the same time the WGA took a new tack that could potentially throw the negotiations into procedural chaos. The writers’ representatives said they planned on Monday to exercise a legal right to insist that the major studios and network production companies bargain with the guild individually rather than as a group.

In a letter sent to members on Saturday, negotiators for the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West said: “Each signatory employer is required to bargain with us individually if we make a legal demand that it do so. We will make this demand on Monday.”

The writers’ move was aimed at breaking what has been, at least in public, a united front by a small number of media conglomerates — General Electric, News Corporation, Sony, Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom and CBS — whose entertainment units dominate the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group.

What's fascinating about this is that this will give CBS a huge advantage. Supposedly all the late night shows are going to come back in the New Year anyway. But CBS will have writers. Letterman might just have the chance to prove, as he has at many times in the past, that he's relevant again.

I watched a Letterman rerun for five minutes the other night and mused how much I really miss my late-night TeeVee wind down. Sure, I've hewed closer to Stewart in the last little while, but if Letterman were back on the air, I'd definitely watch.

Which should make CBS happy, right? They've got the edge.

Um. Well, no.

Let's pick up the tale from Nikki Finke, who reports how CBS responded with this statement on Saturday:

Regarding David Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, seeking an interim agreement with the WGA: We respect the intent of Worldwide Pants to serve the interests of its independent production company and its employees by seeking this interim agreement with the WGA. However, this development should not confuse the fact that CBS remains unified with the AMPTP, and committed to working with the member companies to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with the WGA that positions everyone in our industry for success in a rapidly changing marketplace."

So a network will go against something that actually benefits them? Wait a minute, what's going on here? Aren't these guys competitors?

Well, yes and no. And that's where this further DHD story gets really interesting. By moving to ask each company to negotiate individually, the WGA is helping to make the case that the big media companies who make up the AMPTP are colluding.

Ford, Chrysler and GM don't bargain as one against the UAW. So why should competitors, supposedly with different goals (some have TV networks, some have none) and businesses that are way more healthy than the auto business, be allowed to do this?

Time was, of course, the AMPTP did represent 350 or so different kinds of producing entities, including a lot of independent production companies. When you get above a certain number of players, collusion is impossible -- there's just too many variables.

The reason that there aren't all those companies in the AMPTP anymore is that the big studios lobbied Washington hard to change something called the fin-syn rules. Used to be that a network couldn't produce the shows it aired. By changing the rule in the companies' favor, it meant that their businesses became way more profitable, and led to the disappearance of most of the independent companies that used to be in the AMPTP. In essence, it created a climate where collusion was possible.

And now we see it on its face: a network that releases a statement against a situation that will benefit them and cause them to make more money than their (supposed) competitors.

Now, look at the new tack from the AMPTP.

If you track down to the end of that letter, you'll see the signatures of eight CEOs.

Eight.

They're not even bothering anymore to keep up the fiction that the AMPTP is an umbrella organization representing anything other than the biggest of huge media.

That, to me, is the clarity moment. While the FCC head tries to ram through further media consolidation, Americans, it's time to realize that maybe your congressional representatives should look into this.

The strike's not good for you -- you don't get to see decent shows you like. Even when they want to come back, the network says: doesn't matter. Not if we don't get the deal me and my other billionaire CEO's want.

Media consolidation isn't good for you -- you get your news from these same companies. They pay lobbyists to stack the deck for them. This is not good for democracy. And it's certainly not a climate where anybody should be seeking a labor deal.

The AMPTP has shamelessly engineered walkouts at the table, and has haplessly spent way more time trying to defend its indefensible position than actually bargain.

Americans, fans, it's time to write your congressperson. How hilarious would that be? If House and The Office and Letterman and Buffy and Trek and Desperate Housewives actually helped politicize people? This is more important than pencils. More important than entertainment.

Alex at Complications Ensue has sample letters and links to where you can send them.

It's time for clarity. Time to write that letter.

Other links on the same subject: United Hollywood's take; Elisberg in the Huffington Post