Hollywood is CLOSED – The Simple Math of why we won’t get much new TV this year

Hollywood is Closed for COVID-19

I predict there will be no TV season this year. Whatever TV season that does exist, is going to be short. Like at best 10 episodes. Keep reading to understand why.

(Obviously all of this is opinion. I do not work for Hollywood, but I am doctor and I can do math. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express about three years ago.)

1. Los Angeles is crawling with coronavirus. It’s after July 1st and they’re shutting everything back down. There is no way anyone is going to truly begin filming any large-scale TV shows and movies by August 1st. I applaud Bold and the Beautiful for trying it out, but it ain’t going to last.

2. Hollywood wants some type of coronavirus insurance. What happens if they have to stop filming because the actor playing Sean Murphy on the Good Doctor gets sick. He’d bee on quarantine for two weeks ans so would the rest of the cast, staff, etc. One incident/exposure will put you two week behind schedule. Nobody cares enough to bail out the TV shows. Most of the star actors will survive without working for a while. It’s the crew and guest stars getting screwed over.

3. People will get sick, and it will shut the whole production down. A typical network TV show films August to mid-December, takes a break from mid-December to mid-January ,and finishes filming by April. How are you going to everyone healthy for the entire span of time? They can’t start filming in August and there is a second peak expected in the winter. You’re looking at best two months of filming, which in 60 days, at 9 days per episode – 6 episodes.The the most optimistic projection is a vaccine possibly available in January 2021. If it even happens.

4. So many moving parts. NBC tried out to do a practice filming day with just crew in June. It apparently was quite hilarious, and it only had 25 numbers. You need way more than that – the main actors, guest starts, makeup, lighting, showrunner, props, catering, stuntmen. What about if you want to do a crossover? Wrong. Wrong, wrong. One Chicago for the season is out. You need to try to keep your crew isolated to itself and not visit other TV shows. Ain’t nobody visiting nobody. No fire show will actually fight any fires, because when using me a fire you actually bring the fire department and a bunch of special effects coordinators. That can be a lot of COVID-19 exposures really fast. All emergencies this season actually at the firehouse (hey, Station 19 already does that!)

5. Your big name actors who are not interested in taking the risking their lives. On Grey’s Anatomy alone you have James Pickens Jr (65) , Debbie Allen (70) and Greg Germann. I highly doubt they’re interested in risking their lives regularly to film a TV show. There’s some pretty sobering statistics that up to 10% of people over 65 who get COVID-19 will die.