Stand by for television repeats

If there is one word to describe summer television, it definitely is not “good.”

In fact, I… If there is one word to describe summer television, it definitely is not “good.”

In fact, I don’t think there is just one word that adequately captures just how bad summer programming is. Perhaps the scene of my mother and sister watching Disney’s new summer movie, “Camp Rock,” with slitted eyes while sprawled out unmoving on two couches as if they’d been dosed with a highly potent barbiturate (probably the only way to get through that movie) conveys with more depth just how desperate we – the habitual television-watching demographic – have become.

The summer wait for primetime TV is a long one, especially this summer, which followed the shortest television season in my lifetime, thanks to the 100-day-long 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike.

Unfortunately, television history threatens to repeat itself.

Speculation that the Screen Actors Guild – the labor union representing more than 120,000 U.S. film and television actors, according to the organization’s Web site – might also go on strike began shortly after the beginning of the WGA strike, and now, after the July 10 failed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to renew its contract, which expired June 30, things aren’t looking good.

The situation is similar to last year. AMPTP proposed a new (crappy) contract. SAG, like the WGA, responded with requests for increased compensation from new media and Internet profits. AMPTP, in usual form, balked on the counteroffer, claiming that SAG “puts labor peace at risk.” This marks, I predict, the beginning of a deluge of statements that the organizations will release in which they attack each other in a back-and-forth manner, culminating in the nation’s greatest smack-talk competition since Barack and Hillary.

The complete logistics of the July meeting aren’t entirely known, though AMPTP studios did have this to say: “[SAG] unreasonably expects to obtain more in these negotiations than directors, writers and other actors obtained during their negotiations.”

The studios went on to say that the new contract “includes more than $250 million in additional compensation, important new media rights and protection for pension and health benefits.”

How much of this is true and how much is spin, I’m doubtful we’ll ever know. What we do know is that neither AMPTP nor SAG is satisfied with current offers and it leaves me with a queasy, foreboding feeling and the image of SAG striking outside production studios while AMPTP watches from above while smoking $100 bills, abandoning the viewers to a fall season filled with reruns of summer programming while brain matter dribbles out of our ears.

Others appear more optimistic/delusional that the strike won’t happen.

An article by Entertainment Weekly supposes that since the much smaller American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (what SAG president Alan Rosenberg referred to as the union for “newspeople, sportcasters and DJs”) ratified its new contract with AMPTP Tuesday, this will somehow deter the SAG membership from agreeing to strike.

While I have hope that the SAG-AMPTP dispute won’t reach the level of an actual strike, after the success of the WGA strike, I doubt SAG will settle without putting up a bit of a fight.

One would hope that AMPTP would see reason. Last year’s strike cost AMPTP and the Los Angeles economy a lot of money – an NPR report puts the number at $1.5 billion. The economy is suffering enough as is, and putting additional strain on it brings to mind the phrase “kicking something while it’s down.”

Well perhaps this is asking a little much. This is AMPTP after all, the organization that all too gladly resorted reality television to fill airtime last year and attempted to outsource writing jobs to Britain rather than pay a half-percent increase in non-traditional media residuals.

We can expect negotiations to continue throughout the summer, which is good, because filming of the 2008-2009 television season has already started. So, should the worst happen