Newsgasm: Writers end Top Model picket line

Industry

By Tabloid Baby | Monday, October 16, 2006 | 11:45 am | 5 Comments

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The America’s Next Top Model writers’ strike has ended with a whimper– for the time being, anyway– because production on the latest season is ending, and the protesters decided they’d only look stupid picketing an empty building.

The group insists on its MySpace blogthat the fight goes on: ” We are adjusting tactics. While the strike and comprehensive campaign will continue, the daily picket at the ANTM office is temporarily on hold.”The dozen writers have maintained a picket line outside the Top Model production offices since July 21st, after the CW refused to give them a Writers Guild contract. They’ve also picketed Top Modelcasting calls across the country, contacted advertisers and CW affiliate stations, andpassed out leaflets to The Tyra Banks Show audiences, telling Tyra fans that the Top Model host is not so pretty behind the scenes. Recently, someone has taken a cue from animal activists and put up posters with CW president Dawn Ostroff’s home address.

The Writers Guild of America has sponsored the walkout– but not the posters. The writers say they’re hoping for a National Labor Relations Board election to get the WGA to represent them officially. Meanwhile, story producers are out looking for work, because their responsibilities have been given to the show’s editors.

–Tabloid Baby

5 Comments

  1. 1
    murphena
    Posted October 16, 2006 at 2:05 pm

    This show has actual, professional writers working on it? You would never know from the ridiculous dialogue that Tyra and the others are forced to say every week.

  2. 2
    Leah3t
    Posted October 17, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    Gosh I hope nobody ever posts my picture side by side with Tyra in a bathing suit.

    Yeah, murphena is right. I wouldn’t try to take credit for Tyra’s “let’s all talk. who has fears? who needs some care bear time?” speeches.

  3. 3
    mikefenn
    Posted October 18, 2006 at 6:57 pm

    HOLY CRAP. Were you guys just on ANTM?!?!?!!?

  4. 4
    Film_Girl
    Posted October 19, 2006 at 7:54 pm

    I’m all for the Union thing, but having the WGA sanction these guys as “writers” always bothered me. Personally, it seems to me like the proper title has now been given to that job now, ie. editors. It isn’t writing if you are assembling clips of people’s words and actions on a computer screen — it is editing. Write a spec script, get an actual agent (not manager) and land a gig on a WGA sanctioned sitcom if you want to be WGA…but don’t call reality TV work writing — it is editing.

  5. 5
    roxanne
    Posted October 23, 2006 at 11:50 pm

    believe it or not, a lot of what you see is written.

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