The big news in TV right now is the Hollywood writers strike, which began earlier this month. For many, it’s no longer a profession that pays a living wage. Here’s hoping the studios, networks and streamers — which are boasting profits and paying their CEOs hundreds of millions — work out a fair contract in the coming days or weeks. But it’s possible they could delay, confident that the strike won’t affect their summer rollout of scripted series.
If the strike lasts for months? The network lineup — all those cop shows and sitcoms — will not be ready to premiere in the fall as usual. We’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it. For the time being, writers have not yet asked audiences to boycott TV altogether or cancel their streaming subscriptions, but a number of shows in production have been paused.
Before we get to your summer preview, there’s one other minor change to the TV landscape worth noting: HBO Max and Discovery+ will no longer be separate streaming platforms. As of May 23, they will be combined into a single app called Max. The hope is that audiences will come to think of it as a superstore of content, not unlike that offered by Netflix.
