From FOX:
After waiting with bated breath, we now have the highly anticipated season premiere info! We’ll get things rolling with a two-night, four-hour event, Tuesday and Wednesday, January 15th and 16th, at 8/7c, only on FOX! Make sure to watch both nights for a glimpse of the season seven hopefuls (and hopeless!), Ryan Seacrest, and the AI judges you’ve surely missed!
With no end in sight to the WGA strike, FOX will be relying on American Idol even more than usual. Typically, the show single-handedly catapults the network from the bottom to the top of the ratings heap. This year, it could help FOX fill gaping holes left by their scripted shows forced on hiatus by the strike.
Can we look forward to a nightly marathon of Idol as the strike drags on through the season?
Eep!
ETA: A major strike rally is planned in front of FOX headquarters in Los Angeles this afternoon…
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Fox Loves The Strike
Despite the fact that 24 is on hold indefinitely, and that Kiefer Sutherland agreed to all that jail time for nothing, Peter Chernin, president and COO of Fox’s corporate parent, News Corp, said that “a strike is probably a positive for the company.” He noted that Fox airs more non-scripted and primetime animated shows than its competitors — shows that are unaffected by the strike. “We would expect if anything that it would lift our market share and have us win this season by an even greater margin than we expect to,” Chernin said.
What he is also saying is that if they win the ratings by huge margins they will be able to charge advertisers more, and thus make more money than the other networks.
I’m sure the writers love hearing the fact that a network has the chance to make more money without the writers than with them. Makes that endless circle a little tougher to walk.
Crazy Days and Nights
Animated shows are unaffected by the strike? How is that…don’t they need writers, too? Or are they just in a different group?
One of the articles I read about the strike said that animated shows are not affected because of the nature of their production. The scripts are written first and then it takes about a year to do all the drawings. So, it will take a year long strike before new shows stop showing up (although I imagine that if the strike goes on long enough, there might be a ripple in animation production)
Maybe we’ll get a decent amount of time spent on the Hollywood round this year. That’s one possible positive. Otherwise, I hope the strike is settled soon.
Seth Macfarlane, the creator of Family Guy, is siding with the writers and said that the last episode with his involvement will air this Sunday.
But I am STILL reeling from the fact that FOX suspended “24″ indefinitely. I just can’t believe that I will have to go into January without it.
I hope the writers stick it out until they get what they deserve. I watch a few shows online and the networks do sell ads for these spots, but the writers don’t get compensation for this at all. Not cool. I imagine the television paradigm will continue to shift and they need to stake their claim now.