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Hollywood Strikes Mean Steady Diet of Reruns, Game Shows and Reality TV

Scripted television series premiering at a slower pace. The “New Releases” and “Just Added” banners on streaming services piling up with reality shows, documentaries and international fare. Ninety-minute episodes of […]




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How TV Writing Became a Dead-End Job

For the six years he worked on “The Mentalist,” beginning in 2009, Jordan Harper’s job was far more than a writing gig. He and his colleagues in the writers’ room […]




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Hollywood Strikes: Labor Day Looms as Crisis Point

In May, when 11,500 movie and television writers went on strike, Hollywood companies like Netflix, NBCUniversal and Disney reacted with what amounted to a shrug. The walkout wasn’t great, but […]




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In Hollywood, the Strikes Are Just Part of the Problem

Existential hand-wringing has always been part of Hollywood’s personality. But the crisis in which the entertainment capital now finds itself is different.Instead of one unwelcome disruption to face — the […]







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Hollywood Actors’ Strike Looms as SAG-AFTRA Says Contract Talks Collapse

Like the striking writers, leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, have described their labor dispute in stark terms, calling the present moment “existential” for their members.And like the writers, they […]




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The SAG-AFTRA Union Could Strike in Hollywood This Week

Why It Matters: A second strike could shut Hollywood down completely.Hollywood is already 80 percent shut down since the writers went on strike on May 2. While some television shows […]




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The Case That Could Be Fox’s Next Dominion

Of all the distortions and paranoia that Tucker Carlson promoted on his since-canceled Fox News program, one looms large: a conspiracy theory that an Arizona man working as a covert […]




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Ryan Seacrest, “Wheel of Fortune” and the Lasting Pull of Game Shows

One by one, as streaming services grow in popularity, old standbys of the TV landscape are falling by the wayside.The number of soap operas, a decades-old linchpin of daytime television, […]




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How Greg Gutfeld on ‘Fox News’ Is Beating ‘The Tonight Show’

One evening in May, the most-watched man in late-night television these days staked out a curious if characteristic position: A 38-year-old teacher who allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old student, […]