I have just returned from the States, where the Writers Guild of America strike, that began on November 5th, has wiped out quite a lot of awful TV shows. This is a relief, and not just for a TV-phobic Englishwoman like myself; most people talking about the strike were in sympathy with the strikers, but not sorry that ‘housewives’ TV’, (slurpy sitcoms, and baboon-brained talk-shows), had been forced off the schedules.

In the UK, we get the best of the US - Friends, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, but the industry thrives on rubbish. We’re told it’s what viewers want, which would be depressing if it were true, but I hold to the optimistic view that rubbish TV is what the producers and the executives want us to want. I am absolutely sure, from my own dealings with the BBC in the UK, supposedly a high-end producer, that it is insanity to take power from those who actually know how to make programmes, and who are passionate about quality, and to give power to boardroom executives obsessed by ratings, fashion, and their own importance.

In the US, Jeff Zucker, head of NBC, has gleefully seized on the strike as a way of cancelling contracts, and cutting costs. For him, the strike is about money, not about the way the industry does business. The holes in the schedules, hacked out by the strike, have been padded with Reality TV shows and repeats, and no one seems to mind – in fact ratings at NBC have risen. Zucker sees this as proof that people don’t need all that wasted money on new drama and sit-coms. What he doesn’t add, or perhaps chose to consider, is that people don’t need them because they are so bad.

Everyone who works in TV knows business as usual can’t continue. The bullish executive route to falling viewing figures is to cut costs by making cheaper programmes – so Reality TV and chatshows are in fashion, and documentaries and drama are not. If I ran a restaurant and the menu wasn’t good enough to bring the diners through the door, would the smart move be to turn it into a fast-food joint? Why not just turn it into the best?

I have often said that creative people should be at the heart of decision-making in all areas of life. There is a myth that creative people can’t do money and can’t do business. The truth is that those of us who live on our wits and by our skills, and get paid nothing unless we make something, are usually very good at seeing both the big picture and the detail.

I had the chance to talk to a few screenwriters while I was in the States, and the frustration there is just as much about quality and opportunity, as it is about money. Writers have been forced into a very lowly role in the TV and movie industries, and it is this that should change. If writers had more control over what they write – instead of being dictated to by executives, we would see better TV, and better movies – by that I mean, wittier, wiser, more adventurous. Writers are not just guns for hire – they are people who are can make something new, something that hasn’t been seen a million times before.

Sadly, it looks as though the Writers’ Guild may be broken by this strike. What began as a fight over revenue for sales of DVD’s and downloads, has turned into a bitter discussion about the value of the ‘product’, as the execs like to call it. Good writers will find, like their striking colleagues in other disciplines, that globalisation means there is always someone else you can hire. Our world belongs not to the one who can do – the maker, the achiever, but to the one who says who can do. Executive power has replaced creative power.

Everybody wants to be a writer these days, or so it seems, which is curious at a time when the writer is not particularly valued by society, and certainly not by business. There are hundreds of screenwriting courses on offer, and no doubt thousands of really bad ‘writers’ out there who will rush to sit in front of their computers, on Final Draft, churning out low-grade fodder for mindless TV.

The Internet, seen as TV’s greatest challenge, is only so because that is where creativity is heading. This ‘problem’ the high-paid execs claim to be solving, is the only thing they can be said to have created by themselves.