![]() While many of the soap episodes shown last week were based on scripts written by guild members before the strike each daytime drama tends to ready episodes at least two months in advance network representatives refused to say exactly how they were preparing the shows that will be seen as those stockpiles are depleted. “With the Internet, people don’t ever have to cross a picket line. “There’s just no way three people can be doing that job,” said Sandra Weintraub, a striking writer who has written for the show for more than three years. Rebecca Budig, left, and Debbi Morgan on an episode this month of ∺ll My Children. Credit. The sexual shenanigans, back-from-the-grave miracles and double-dealing that are the lifeblood of such shows are being scripted by mostly uncredited, ragtag staffs variously made up of network executives, producers, secretaries and, some union members insist, scabs who are either writing sub rosa or slipping plot points to management. A guild designation known as “financial core” allows individuals to pay some union dues and fees and to be covered by collective bargaining agreements, but those individuals are not union members and are not compelled to go on strike, but they are the exception. ![]() But in a genre that thrives on drawn-out cliffhangers, the most sensational mystery in daytime may be how these shows are being written at all, considering that nearly all of their writers are guild members on strike.Ī handful of writers, for “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital” on ABC and “The Young and the Restless” on CBS, have officially crossed picket lines to return to work in recent weeks. None of the eight daytime dramas on network television have gone into reruns, and none have plans to do so. ![]() Shows like “General Hospital” and “As the World Turns” have become virtually the only reliable option for viewers interested in watching rerun-free, serialized drama on broadcast television. As the writers’ strike approaches the three-month mark, it has conveyed new cachet, such as it is, on soap operas. ![]()
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