MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
November 15- November 22, 2007 Edition
Writers Strike
Strains Book
Promotions
NEW YORK, NY/11/12/07–The Writers Guild of America strike entered its second week today, impacting not only Hollywood television shows but also book promotions. On November 5, the Guild’s 12,000 members began their protest for a great share of profits, especially from online sales. Effects of the walk-out are now reaching into the book publishing industry. I addition to disrupting late night television shows, the strike has also hurt book promotions. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report both cancelled interviews with authors of several newly-released books.
Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal told the media that “Often, to be honest, both Colbert and Stewart have really chosen books that don’t often get television coverage–peculiar political books that in the realm of TV coverage are rather eccentric.”
David Levy, UK author of Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (HarperCollins) was scheduled to fly from London to appear on the Colbert show, but his appearance was cancelled because of the strike, a New York Times article said.
Among authors cancelled on The Daily show are Karen Greenberg, author of The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge Univ. Press), Robert Reich, author of Supercapitalism (Knopf), CNN talking head Lou Dobbs, author of Independents Day (Viking), and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, author of Surrender Is Not an Option (Threshold). No interviews have made it on air.
In addition to the David Levy interview, The Colbert Report was forced to drop AJ Jacobs, author of The Year Of Living Biblically, and radio producer David Isay, author of Listening Is An Act Of Love, and a talk with Jared Cohen, debut author of Children of Jihad. In addition, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson cancelled author Jenny McCarthy’s interview for her latest work, Louder than Words.
A number of publicists, however, say that while the impact of the strike is disappointing, they don’t see it as disastrous.
This week the WGA planned morning and afternoon shifts of strikers at CBS Radford Studios, CBS Television City, Disney Studios, Fox Studios, NBC Burbank, Paramount Studios/Raleigh Studios Hollywood, Sony Pictures Studios, Universal studios, Warner Bros. Studios.
