The WGA strike has had an impact that goes beyond late night hosts growing beards and folks like me considering spending their hard earned free time watching American Gladiators. While it may be a mild annoyance for me, the WGA/AMPTP standoff is starting to have ripple effects on a number of other online and offline endeavors.
For example, the lack of the Golden Globes ceremony last night eliminated the platform for fashion designers to break into the public psyche. More importantly, what will the fashion pundits have to talk about? This dooms us to another week of Spears sisters news coverage instead of Best & Worst red carpet wrap-ups we so rightly deserve. Social media queens/fashion snarks “The Fug Girls” did a great job capturing this over in their NYMagazine column.
Once I started thinking about the strike, I began to wonder how Hey!Nielsen, a social networking site where users share opinions about TV shows with the company who provides feedback to the networks, would deal with the lack of new content. Steve Ciabatonni at the Hey!Nielsen blog shared some of their plans with me:
We are working on a few ideas to keep the interest high and we are hoping to spark more conversations around Video Games (our newest category which is drawing some activity), movies, and bands.
Leading up to the Super Bowl (the most watched show on the planet traditionally), we’re enlisting some key Hey! Nielsen members to rate the ads live on super sunday — I think we’ll have a lot of fun with that. Most people like the ads more than they like the game, so… I’m eager to chat with those folks during the game.
How true it is. While original content will start drying up, ad copywriters are most definitely not on strike and will keep the fodder for armchair critics coming. If nothing else, this is a creative distraction from the strike. Like so many of you out there, I am crossing my fingers and toes for a speedy resolution.