My pal Pat O'Neill and I were discussing the upcoming Tony Awards ceremony here. Then he sent me this…
I note, in regard to my question to you about them, that the administrators of Tony Awards are now contemplating two equally uncomfortable ideas: either holding the ceremony without a TV show, or postponing the whole thing until the strike is over…because the WGA refused to give them a waiver.
And now, according to this and other online articles, they've negotiated the terms of a waiver and the show must (will) go on. This is probably wise on the part of the WGA because if the strike is still on — and especially if an actors strike seems imminent — the Tony Awards could be a show of support for the strikers. This is in addition to promoting the shows currently running on Broadway.
And it frees up a lot of attendees and presenters from the awkward-for-many choice of crossing a picket line. That's often a damned-if-you-do, damned if you don't decision. This next e-mail is from Brent McKee and it takes us into that area…
It recently came out that Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings crossed the WGA picket line to film the final week of Jeopardy! episodes because the other host of the show — Mayim Bialik — refused to cross the picket lines. He is being roundly condemned because of this. Can you clarify for me what is going on here?
The questions were written by WGA members months ago. No new questions will be written until after the strike is resolved. I also understand that they shoot one week of episodes in a single day. Jennings is not a member of the Writers Guild. I believe that he has to be a member of SAG in order to do the series, but I'm not absolutely certain. So I suppose my question is what obligations does Ken Jennings have in the current situation, and is the hatred being directed towards him valid?
I'm a devout Union Guy but I'd be reticent to condemn the man without knowing more about the situation. There's a thorny area here because there are folks who are in violation of their contracts to not cross picket lines. There are also instances where the host of a show may elect to cross a picket line for the good of the show and the others who work on it. Sometimes, they get condemned for this, sometimes not.
During past WGA strikes, a number of late night hosts — including the much-revered Mr. Carson — elected at some point to go back to work and to do new shows, allegedly without the employment of scab writers. Nobody faulted Johnny. David Letterman, when he was back on NBC, returned to work during the strike and even made a running joke about doing pointless, non-written bits because his writers were absent. I don't recall any hatred of Dave then…and he was returning his show to nightly new episodes.
As you note, Jennings chose to go in and host one day of taping five shows with questions that were already written. Then the show was already going to go out of production for a while. It would be a different issue if Jennings were writing questions or working with material written by scabs. Or if his crossing the picket line was enabling the production company to deliver an ongoing stream of new product to the broadcasters.
Ms. Bialik refused. Someone wrote to ask me if I thought that was just because she knew that Jennings would do it. I have no idea but it's commendable either way. If Ken Jennings henceforth refuses to host the show without the striking WGA writers, I would think that was commendable, too. Let's see what happens.