Nearly three months into the Writers’ Guild of America strike, and just over two weeks into a SAG-AFTRA strike, the media industry is beginning to look at how TV lineups could be impacted.

During the upfront season, Canadian broadcasters said they would be able to deliver on strong fall schedules, despite the unknowns brought by the strikes. In addition to pulling in a wide slate of unscripted programming, they have also boosted their lineups of Canadian originals. Bell Media told MiC that it remained confident in its fall schedule, while Rogers Sports & Media’s fall TV schedule remains largely unchanged, though it has picked up replacement shows The Price is Right at Night, What Would You Do? and Press Your Luck as Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU and the shows in the Chicago franchise have been given later starts.

So far, agencies are also not too concerned about being able to manage client campaigns for the time being, especially during the lower-demand summer season – but they are mindful of the fact that a longer strike could impact the fall season and beyond.

“We continue to work closely with clients and partners to ensure plans reflect the realities of the Canadian landscape, including strike developments and changes to new content releases,” says Leanne Burnett-Wood, president of Magna Canada. “There is an abundance of content in the market for viewers, and clients and agencies should continue to follow and buy based on consumer viewing patterns as they evolve through the strike. The situation also creates an opportunity to invest and consume new and existing Canadian content.”

In a report created for its clients, Horizon Media says that average prime time ratings for the 25- to 54-year-old and 18- to 49-year-old demos are already lower than during the 2007-2008 writer’s strike, so the GRPs already purchased in scripted prime time programming will be easily replaced by alternative unscripted programs. Any audience losses could also be recouped through fall’s live sports programming with the NFL, MLB playoffs and the start of the NBA and NHL seasons. The agency suggests that marketers should look to ad-supported streamers, which have libraries of content, as an alternative to subscription-based streamers like Netflix and Disney+ that might also lose some viewership due to the lack of original programming, which have been major priorities in recent years.

“I think for the most part we are still quite stable, even if some of the programming is not coming,” says Cobi Zhang, VP of media investment and activations at Horizon. “We have been able to replace the missing quality with the same quality of content, but my only concern is that if the strike does go on for longer, then winter spring season, next summer and the next, there’s kind of a domino effect into the future.”

The 2007-2008 WGA strike is credited, in part, with leading to a boom in unscripted programming as U.S. broadcasters rushed to fill their schedules. What is different with this strike is there is already an abundance of unscripted content, such as reality and game shows. To that end, Horizon Media says English conventional TV is likely to see the greatest impact given its reliance on scripted U.S. programming, especially in primetime simulcast, even though U.S. broadcasters are airing more unscripted programming compared to past years. Specialty channels will fare better because of the fact that it already relies heavily on unscripted content, as well as more Canadian-produced originals. French-language networks and CBC should be relatively unscathed, given that they rely almost entirely on homegrown, Canadian content.

However, over time, reality producers and writers have more closely aligned themselves with scripted writers, and may be reluctant to cross the WGA picket line, limiting reality replacement content.

Another key difference from the previous writer’s strike is that conventional TV audiences are much smaller than they were 15 years ago.

“Coming into the fall season, the fall season broadcasters were facing audience declines already,” says Devon MacDonald, president of Cairns Oneil. “The loss of new, high value content will put additional doubts into the minds of consumers who are looking for more and looking for new. This, of course, will impact streamers too, but they are more reliant on subscription revenue than advertising. Streamers purchase content with a longer lead time, so they have a larger window to manage delays.”

And simply shifting buys to sports isn’t an answer for every advertiser, as it was already a more pricey buy and there is only so much ad inventory to go around.

“[Strikes] will also put additional pressure and demand on live content like sports and news to capture consumers in the now, which will leave a lot of advertisers out who can’t manage the premium attached to it,” MacDonald says.