by Can Tran

Created on: December 02, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2012

The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) strike had affected the whole world. One would think that the WGA strike only affects Hollywood. But, it does extend to the rest of North America. Not only that, the WGA strike affects the whole entire world. One could ask: Why would the WGA strike affect the entire world? There are several popular TV shows from the United States that are the highest rated. They have become extremely popular across the world.

Back in October of 2007, I had attended this Japanese anime convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called TandokuCon. During one of the panels, one of people in the audience asked about what is going to happen to the anime companies because of the WGA. Voice actor Liam O'Brien, who is known for doing the voices of Gaara of the Desert for "Naruto" and Ray Lundgren of "GunXSword" explained that the anime companies do contracted work for the anime companies in Japan. As a result, the WGA strike had no effect on Japanese anime.

In between panels, I and a few people had talked about the effects of the WGA strike. All of us were not thrilled about the upcoming WGA strike. It would take place in December of 2007 and end in June of 2008. The WGA strike was not all that great. I had been waiting months before they showed season two of "Heroes." Heroes is one of the highest rated shows on an international scale. It can be considered one of the few shows that is saving NBC.

This had made me think of what had happened back in 2000-2001. There was a writer's strike during that time. At the same time, there was the boom in popularity of reality TV shows.

The original reality TV shows were on MTV called: "Real World" and "Road Rules." Those two shows were popular in their own right. But, Real World seemed to go down south after the Las Vegas season in 2003.

Around 2000, there was "Survivor" on CBS. Sixteen people would be stranded on an island for forty days. The "survivor" would end up getting one-million dollars in cash.  And then a few months later, the newest reality TV show called "Big Brother" would appear on CBS.

Afterwards, there was a spike in popularity for reality TV. In application, reality TV shows are very cheap to produce. You do not need to hire union writers such as WGA writers.

You hire a psychologist to pick out contestants that would create the most player drama. For some interesting reason, we enjoy watching other people's drama as long as we are not dragged into it.  After that, a popular show is created.

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