America's Top Model Writers Strike Back

Posted on August 8, 2006

Twelve staffers on Tyra Banks' hit reality show, America's Top Model, say that they are actually writing the "unscripted" show and they want the right to unionize and be paid benefits, just like members of the Writers Guild. Of course, the entire reason they were hired and not called "writers" is so that the producers wouldn't have to pay them what Guild members make.

They're called "the story department." They slave over treatments and final drafts. They agonize over storytelling techniques, character development and plot twists. But are they writers? The answer is yes if you ask the 12 staff producers on the reality hit "America's Next Top Model" who went on strike July 21 to win recognition as members of the Writers Guild of America. The "Top Model" dozen have been walking a picket line outside the West Los Angeles offices of the show's executive producer Ken Mok ever since.
"Say you're watching a ('Top Model') scene with six girls standing around talking," says Kai Bowe, a striking "Top Model" associate show producer. "And then you switch to a girl in (a one-on-one) interview, and then you go back to the girls talking but with a few lines of voice-over from the interview. We're the ones who choose all of that, line by line."
Adds Bowe's fellow striker Sara Sluke, "It's not like it comes out of the camera that way." As show producers and associate show producers, they slog through an average of 200 hours of raw footage to assemble each 41-minute episode. They shape the story lines in each episode and the overarching drama for each cycle of competition. They determine how the characters are portrayed -- and they find the "red herrings" to throw in to keep things from getting too predictable, Sluke says.
The "Top Model" labor action marks an escalation of the union's efforts to organize in the reality TV arena. That push has drawn criticism from some in the industry who view it as a costly effort waged on behalf of nonmembers who are employed by the very shows that are taking jobs away from existing members.

This is merely the latest battle in the war between the Writers Guild and those who produce reality television, which is anything but unscripted. The bottom line is: if it creates a script and it writes lines, it's a writer. The gig for reality shows is up: it's time to admit that all these shows are scripted and then hire actual Writers Guild members to do the work.