And not too much was funny
“We have nothing to do,” the talk-show host said. “The writers aren’t here.” To fill the time, he got a shave on the air. Johnny Carson, then host of “The Tonight Show,” was also at a loss. ”It is not fun to come to work when you see your friends who you’ve known for many years standing out on a picket line,” he said on air. “And it’s a weird picket line: The writers are out there holding up these signs and there’s nothing on them.” But the 1988 strike by the Writers Guild of America did not produce so many fresh jokes. For one thing, the airwaves were filled with reruns. And not too much was funny. The strike lasted 22 weeks, reportedly cost the industry $500 million, and caused hardship for individual strikers. “People lost their houses, they weren’t able to send their kids to college,” Dick Wolf, executive producer of Law and Order, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001, when a similar strike threatened (but didn’t materialize.) Some were forced to adjust in creative ways. Fran Drescher and her husband Peter Marc Jacobson (later co-creators of “The Nanny”) launched a good business, Loaf & Kisses Gourmet Croutons, which kept going. The strike also resulted in a changed cultural landscape. The fall television season was delayed, and several shows were permanently canceled. Much of the public...
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