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the larger later reward of eventual Guild Membership, hopefully under a better contract, is far more preferable than what could be a few weeks as a scab writer then no more writing work EVER.

Writing as a scab would be far more detrimental to a television writer than film simply because television writers are hired by other writers. Even if the Guild waived their barred for life rule, the members have a good memory. Once a name gets out as a scab writer, the showrunner writers will not hire that person on their show. Period.

>>>>>>It's certainly unpleasant to read potential stories of all the economy to be affected (possibly), by any prolonged strike. What about the people who watch these shows on TV and find they don't like the writing to begin with?

Why aren't there any strikes from disaffected viewers of stuff like this?

Charlie's Angels-the original TV series, was one of the worst written shows ever. Did you see or hear about anyone complain about it? NO! It was the nineteen-seventies and the whole decade was ridiculous!
Ridiculous was accepted.

We, the viewers need to flex our own dissatisfaction muscles occasionally and let these "writers" know when we think their "work" is below par.<<<<<<

Hollywood is painfully aware of defecting viewers. In fact, that's what the sticking point of the strike is about. Over the last few years, the studios have seen their audiences increasingly turn to the internet for their viewing pleasure. The networks have tried to stay in the game by broadcasting their programming online. But it seems that they forgot to pay the writers for those broadcasts and now the writers are refusing to work.

But back to the viewers. I would caution you to consider that what is aired on television and on the big screen rarely reaches you directly from the writer. As I pointed out before, there are many, many people involved in the process. While it is true that more of what the writer says is final in television, even that finality is subject to approval from studio and network execs before it's aired.

An example of this is Lost. The writers did an amazing job telling the stories from the beginning, but the studio saw they were making too much money on the show to let it end too quickly. The writers would submit scripts to the executives and they wouldn't approve them if a mystery had been cleared up as is natural when telling a story. The networks had the writers to prolong the reveals by adding fluff.

The fans did notice and complained

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