WGA baits but switches on reality

[katty]

Posted: Tue., Oct. 30, 2007, 11:55am PTMore Articles:
more: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117975011.html?categoryid=1682&cs=1

Nielsen caught in full-spin zone
There's something about reality

WGA baits but switches on reality
Interest in nonfiction 'writers' adds to drama

By BRIAN LOWRY
Here's a cold dowsing of reality for reality TV producers, borrowing from the adage that Hollywood is really just high school with money: You know the cool kids, the asterisk-free writers, who have been flirting with you? They're only doing it so you'll help them with their math.
As the negotiating deadline between the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers nears, everyone has wondered what demands might be jettisoned in the hope of gaining concessions and cobbling together a deal. And despite assertions to the contrary, the goal of bringing unscripted TV under the guild's aegis (a move with obvious strategic and financial benefits) does seem like a logical casualty -- a pawn, as it were, in this high-stakes chess match.

To be fair, more perceptive pundits (OK, me) expressed skepticism from the moment the guild began championing reality producers for membership, suggesting that this arranged marriage displays all the earmarks of a criminal getting married to prevent his spouse from testifying against him. By absorbing reality TV into the WGA, networks couldn't rely on unscripted programs filling the airwaves as a hedge in the event of a strike.