As Writers’ Strike Spreads, Networks Outsource Comedy to Third World

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti.  This capitol city of two million–whose residents are described by economists as chronically underemployed–is in line to get a surge of new employers soon: US TV networks whose new shows have been crippled by a writers’ strike that shows no signs of abating soon.

“Good–the sketch is much funnier with the hat.”

“We’ll show the writers we can do it without them,” said the Comedy Channel’s Lloyd Gibson.  “As they say in France, the graveyards are full of indispensable people.”

People’s Republic of China:  1.3 billion people, there must be somebody who can write a monologue.

Both cable and broadcast channels have been hit by the strike, and as on-air performers refuse to cross the writers’ picket line, Haiti and other underdeveloped countries where labor is cheap stand to benefit.

“I went to the tattoo parlor and forgot to say ‘When’.”

“For what we would spend on Evian in a day, we can get a whole season’s worth of scripts for ‘The Office’ in Myanmar,” says Monty Roget of NBC.

Bangalore call center:  Okay–how about “Krishna walks into a bar and asks the bartender ‘Do you have any beer nuts?’”

The use of Haitian writers has given Saturday Night Live’s traditional political sketches a sharp new edge, according to Lance Pachino, TV critic for the Chicago Sun-Times.  “Most of the SNL stuff of the past few seasons has been pretty lame,” he says.  “In Haiti, politicians kill their opponents by tying them up, putting a tire around their necks and setting it on fire.  That’s a great lead-in to an Ashlee Simpson lip-synch.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman