Was in a conversation about opening up writers rooms with @nikiaken and @brakes4unicorns yesterday and I think one of the things to remember about the 'long running shows' of the past that is sometimes overlooked is the way the freelance writer's voice was subsumed by the show

It was common for a writer to write the first two drafts (and only them) and the script to be taken 'in house' and sometimes rewritten by the show's script editor. As a freelance writer this wasn't a great feeling but it did breed a very collaborative feel

to the way TV was written. Writers still accepted their awards as sole authors but TV drama felt less authored. If anything had an author it was the show itself. The move to smaller runs, and thus no script departments has put all the 'ownership' for a script onto its sole writer

At the time it was welcomed as allowing writers to have their authentic 'voice' (not rewritten in-house) but it also got TV writing away from the experience of collaborative writing. While brainstorming 'rooms' made the creation of TV more group-centred

the actual writing became less so. I don't know how a more collaborative approach (experienced paired with non-experienced) as has been suggested, sits with the desire to have more 'authentic' voices from previously excluded groups, but TV used to be more about 'shared' writing

Perhaps it is time to return to that process.