Precisely. As someone with more than a passing interest in narration techniques in movies and television, I fear - as I mentioned earlier - more for the continuity of plot lines than I (think I will) suffer from withdrawal syndrome in the next few months. To clarify, it wouldn't have bugged me that much if some network had decided beforehand to produce shorter seasons of certain TV shows (12 episodes instead of 24, for instance, were exactly what was intended for
Lost this year -- except now they're not even sure they can air that many), but the forced interruption of the creative process of the many writer-producers who supervise the storylines encompassing more episodes is worrisome: assuming there will be no new episodes this season, when all these shows will be picked up again in September (there will be no cancellations this year, as there are next to no new project in production -- in fact, ABC, Fox, CBS and WB have fired most of their writers by now) it's going to be total chaos. They'll have to wrap up the loose ends of plots that were meant to last all year this year
and offer new material to keep the newly-employed writers working. Furthermore, people's memory is notoriously short and many shows rely on weekly airings to keep the viewers' attention fixed on the latest cliffhanger, big revelation and threat looming over the horizon. Once this connection has disappeared for what is basically three times the normal hiatus, I'm afraid several programs will have to re-build their target audience almost from scratch. This is going to be harder to face for shows featuring an arching plot that spans the whole season than for those that replicate a formula in each new episode. While
House technically belongs to the latter group, its writers seem to have been struggling with providing decent medium-length stories since season one, and I wonder whether this forced break will push their efforts back somehow.
This is a good place to read about the strike with opinions from both sides of the fence.
