WGA West on Thursday escalated its campaign to organize reality TV writers, producers and editors by assisting in the filing of a class-action lawsuit against four production companies and four networks. A dozen of the self-described "storytellers" filed the case in Los Angeles Superior Court over alleged violations of California labor law, including failure to pay overtime, denial of meal periods and improper record keeping. The suit, which is expected to be the first of many, was filed against production group Next Entertainment and the company with which it has a deal, Telepictures. Also named as defendants were Syndicated Prods. and Dawn Syndicated Prods. All of the companies were said to be responsible for such series as The Bachelor, Are You Hot?, The Will, The Starlet and The Real Gilligan's Island. ABC, CBS, the WB Network and Turner Broadcasting System also were targeted for their role in developing and airing these shows.
WGA West on Thursday escalated its campaign to organize reality TV writers, producers and editors by assisting in the filing of a class-action lawsuit against four production companies and four networks. A dozen of the self-described "storytellers" filed the case in Los Angeles Superior Court over alleged violations of California labor law, including failure to pay overtime, denial of meal periods and improper record keeping. The suit, which is expected to be the first of many, was filed against production group Next Entertainment and the company with which it has a deal, Telepictures. Also named as defendants were Syndicated Prods. and Dawn Syndicated Prods. All of the companies were said to be responsible for such series as The Bachelor, Are You Hot?, The Will, The Starlet and The Real Gilligan's Island. ABC, CBS, the WB Network and Turner Broadcasting System also were targeted for their role in developing and airing these shows.
Comedy is king on ABC's new fall lineup, while reality shows are more akin to knights called up to do battle in particularly treacherous time slots. ABC chairman Lloyd Braun and entertainment president Susan Lyne admitted Tuesday that the network went overboard in the second half of this season by serving up a slew of unscripted series -- Are You Hot? All-American Girl, The Family, I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! etc. -- most of which tanked in the ratings. The 2003-04 season scheduled unveiled by Braun and Lyne at Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday afternoon is chockablock with sitcoms, including four newcomers and the return of the TGIF mantle for Friday nights. "We've devoted enormous resources to our comedy development the past two years," Braun said during the presentation, noting that it was the highest number of comedies the network has programmed in four years. He added that the network hoped to expand further to 12 by the end of the 2003-04 campaign.
- 5/14/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
As the war in Iraq nears the one-week mark, broadcast networks are laboring to strike the right balance between breaking news and their usual schedules. With many advertisers shunning war-related news coverage, networks stand to lose millions of dollars by pre-empting regular programming for the fighting in Iraq. That has left network schedulers searching for what a network spokesman described as a "delicate balance" in a conflict yielding only intermittent news developments, at least so far. "It's been coming out in piecemeal fashion," NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said of the war news. ABC devoted its primetime Sunday to the 75th Anniversary Academy Awards, but "we were poised to come back on the air at a moment's notice," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said Sunday. "As you can see from monitoring cable channels, there is not a lot of breaking news right now." After war broke out Wednesday night, only ABC remained in full-time war mode Thursday and Friday, while CBS and NBC returned to their regular primetime lineups except for one-hour specials on the war each night. In fact, amid the war coverage, ABC quietly announced Monday that it has yanked two low-rated series: Monday's Veritas: The Quest and the Tuesday reality series The Family. Two Thursday reality series -- Are You Hot? and Profiles From the Front Line -- have been pulled as well. For now, all are expected to be replaced with war-related coverage.
- 3/25/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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