Thread by @popbitch

This is going take us around the houses a bit but, to briefly explain the point: this is how the Hollywood Strikes of 1988 and 2007 accidentally upended the world of television, news, politics and, arguably, even reality itself...

On March 7th 1988, ~9,000 American TV and film writers went on strike over a dispute regarding residuals payments. They downed tools and refused to give film studios and TV networks any new scripts to shoot from until the issue was resolved. The strike lasted five months.

As TV networks weren't getting any new episodes of their hit shows in that time (and audiences very quickly grew tired of repeats) the networks were in desperate need of some way to generate new on-screen content. Content that, crucially, didn't require writers...

Around that same time, a producer and documentary-maker named John Langley was pitching an idea around the networks for a new TV show that would come to absolutely revolutionise the industry. It was called Cops.

The show was effectively a spin-off from a documentary special he had made with Geraldo Rivera a few years previously, called American Vice: The Doping Of A Nation. (Which, if you haven't seen it, is as beautifully Brass Eye as real TV gets index.geraldo.com/page/american-…)

The premise of Cops was as simple as the title. It would just follow police officers around on their beat and show the every day life of a detective on the street. No script. No hosts. No studio. No agents. Just a camcorder and real-life people.

It was the perfect antidote to the networks' strike problem. They were in precise need of shows that required no script, no host, no studio, no agents. Yet John Langley was turned down by every last network he went to with it. All except for one: Fox.

Even there, Fox execs were quibbling over it endlessly, worried that putting amateurs on-screen was going to be ratings death – and they were already on the bones of their arse as it was. The show only got the green-light after a personal intervention from... Rupert Murdoch.

Cops became an absolutely massive success, running for thirty years and generating massive profits. Alongside the Simpsons (which would debut nine months later) the two shows double-handedly saved the ailing Fox network from otherwise certain catastrophe.

The Writers' Strike of 1988 was supposed to harm Fox. Instead, it was the making of it.

(The longer story of Cops, Fox and Murdoch is dealt with in Part One of our series: popbitch.com/2018/03/i-jour… It also takes in Nancy Reagan's music video, the busting of Al Capone's vault, crack-addicted babies and more...)

The trouble with Cops was that – although it wasn't staged or scripted – it was edited. Because much of the tedious daily police work was cut to make room for car chases, arrests and busts, viewers began to assume crime was a much bigger problem in America than it actually was...

As they rarely showed bad guys getting away, viewers also assumed the police was more effective than it actually was too. It wasn't John Langley's intention to affect people's opinions of crime and criminal justice with Cops. He just set out to entertain. But it was happening...

You'd think that we'd have maybe figured out some way to iron kinks like that out in the decades since, but no. Instead, the problem of reality TV morphing our understanding of actual reality is worse (and kinkier) than ever – all thanks to the next strike...

In late 2007, the Writers' Guild of America went on strike again – in part because they felt that unregulated reality TV should fall under the WGA's remit as the 'story producers' on those shows were technically writers. Naturally, the networks disagreed.

As they couldn't come to any immediate agreement on the matter, the writers all went on strike again – so the networks scrabbled around to find shows they could produce and air without using any union staff. A lot of these commissions were reality shows.

One of the reality shows that had been set for the axe in 2007 – but was saved by the strike – was NBC's The Apprentice. The exec who reinstated it, giving Donald Trump a second chance to rehabilitate his career? Jeff Zucker. Who's now the head of CNN.

The Apprentice essentially did for Trump what Cops did for the police. Specifically: created a big primetime television show that focused on his occasional successes, while snipping out and skipping over a lot of the disasters that were also happening...

The Apprentice showed Trump as an extremely successful businessman but in 2004, when the original series aired, he filed his third corporate bankruptcy. When the celebrity edition of The Apprentice started airing in 2008, Trump would file his fourth.

Trump Steaks. Trump Mortgage. GoTrump[dot]com. Trump Magazine. Trump Vodka. Trump Network. All these businesses came crashing down around him while he was busy playing Mr Moneybags on television. His portfolio was in disarray.

Much like John Langley with Cops, it was never Jeff Zucker's intention to affect people's opinions of Donald Trump's presidential viability. He just set out to entertain (etc, etc, etc...)

Jeff Zucker left NBC and became President at CNN in 2013. One of the very first things he oversaw there (his first week, no less) was Piers Morgan inviting Alex Jones of InfoWars on to his show to 'debate' the elementary school mass-shooting: Sandy Hook.

Piers Morgan's abysmal handling of the debate (wetly saying "Alex... Alex... Alex... What was the gun that... Alex... Alex..." for about 15 minutes) meant that Alex Jones had an untrammelled advertising opportunity to plug his site, InfoWars, on CNN.

Alex Jones and InfoWars' stance on the Sandy Hook massacre has since become legacy defining. Jones was the one who pushed the conspiracy that the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation, a Deep State hoax.
Again: this was Jeff Zucker's first week.

Everyone knows where this particular part of the story ends...

(The fuller story of Zucker and Trump's weird Frankenstein/Monster relationship, is in Part Two of our wider story on this whole shitshow: popbitch.com/2018/03/ii-the…)

Rupert Murdoch (who greenlit Cops) and Jeff Zucker (who reinstated The Apprentice) are at the heads of Fox News and CNN respectively. The men behind two of reality TV's most significant successes are now in charge of cable news – each on either side of the "Fake News MSM" divide.

There is absolutely tons more to this story, which we won't jam your timelines up with here (popbitch.com/2018/03/a-tale…) but the reason we got thinking about it again is because of the bizarre (and coincidental) reappearance of Broward County, Florida throughout this whole tale...

John Langley's original TV special American Vice: The Doping Of A Nation was filmed in Broward County.

The entire first season of Cops (except for the season finale special) was filmed on location in Broward County.

Jeff Zucker's first media job was working as a stringer for The Miami Herald while he was still at high school – a Florida newspaper which covers the areas of Monroe Country, Miami-Dade and... Broward County.

Alex Jones almost got fully suspended from his YouTube channels after picking fights with the survivors from another school shooting he was describing as a hoax – Stoneman Douglas High, located in Broward County.

Fox News' Laura Ingraham also got a week of 'unexpected time off' after all her advertisers pulled out when she started took an ill-advised swipe at Stoneman Douglas High survivor David Hogg (who, like Jeff Zucker, also worked as a student stringer for a Broward County newspaper)

These are all total coincidences, it should be stressed – but it's also ballots in Broward County that are currently at the centre of the extremely contentious Florida midterm results. It's a buzzy little place, eh?

Anyway, the whole story is in four parts and covers a lot more ground:
I/ Journalusting Repugnance popbitch.com/2018/03/i-jour…
II/ The Name Of The Scientist popbitch.com/2018/03/ii-the…
III/ Surreal World popbitch.com/2018/03/iii-su…
IV/ Strike Three popbitch.com/2018/04/iv-str…

But TL;DR: Fox would likely have died on the vine had it not been for Cops/WGA Strike 1988, Trump would likely have been an obscurity had it not been for Zucker/WGA Strike 2007.

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