Strike one!

Rolling . . .

As the screenwriters’ and actors’ strikes remain at impasses, the only things rolling in Hollywood right now are the studios—for now.

Bloomberg News reports that even during the impasse, Netflix projects “free cash flow at $1.5 billion more than originally forecast.” Discovery saved “$100 million on film and TV production costs.” Disney is projecting a reduction of “$3 billion in production costs.”

There are few guarantees in life; one of them is that when a company doesn’t produce anything, it doesn’t incur production costs. But you can only sell what you’ve already produced … until you run out.

According to Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish, the company has enough content in the pipeline to keep viewers watching and coming to theaters in the months ahead. We’ll see.

All of this has contributed to lack of urgency shown by the studios in negotiating a strike that has already lasted longer than the 2007 strike. As all strikes do, the two sides will eventually come together, and while viewers may hold the whole of Hollywood in a little lower regard, it will survive (again).

In the meantime, back at the bat cave …

Perhaps the most regrettable result of this is that reality TV is not affected by the strike. Therefore the viewing public will likely be subjected to even more of that indignity and embarrassment, which many times is more scripted than scripted stuff.

Even the really bad film and TV that’s out there (and there’s a ton of it) deserves more respect than programming that encourages the worst behavior possible among otherwise ordinary groups of people acting in outrageous ways catering to the lowest common denominators of society in order to get ratings and sell advertising.

This might be a good time to resume binge-watching “Justified,” “Ozark,” or “Yellowstone.”

Cut . . .