Ahh, it’s that time of year again. The leaves change, the coffee is ordered hot again, the tv lineup changes. No, I don’t mean the premiere of the new shows. I mean when half those shows get cancelled two episodes in and are taken behind the woodshed.
Look, I was as gleeful about the axing of The Playboy Club as everyone else and I’ve never seen a frame. That whole “it’s empowering to women” hullabaloo was enough to turn me off even if I did have a tv (which I don’t). [For reasons of poverty, not snobbery.]
While the tv shows get shuffled around again to accommodate, what happens to all the people working on the shows? Now there are hundreds of crew men and women who are suddenly out of a job. Which is part of the business but… how much say do they have in the creation and development of a show. The boom-mic guy? Not much. He’s not going to pipe up and offer a suggestion for a line reading without getting kicked off the set. But aside from getting fired like that, how much say do they have in where they work?
I really want to know, what’s it like out there? Do crew members look at the listings for new shows and carefully pick which ones they’d like to work on? Do they have that many options, are there that many available openings? Would they even see a script before it’s being read right in their faces? I don’t think so. And now they’re out of a job for something they had no control over.
Writing Without Stamina 