00:00The show Heroes, starring Hayden Panettiere, was one of the most popular shows on TV in 2006.
00:06A fight over labor broke it a year later.
00:09Here's what happened.
00:10Heroes was a show about a group of ordinary people who randomly got superpowers.
00:14When it premiered on NBC in 2006, it was the network's biggest drama in five years,
00:19averaging over 14 million viewers a week.
00:21The show's central hunt was between Zachary Quinto's Sylar, a super-powered serial killer,
00:27and Claire Bennett, a teenage cheerleader with superhealing, played by Panettiere.
00:31Save the cheerleader, save the world became the tagline of the era.
00:35The show's co-creator and showrunner, Tim Kring, had a whole franchise planned.
00:39A 24-episode second season, online comics, a spinoff, and other various projects.
00:44Then the writers walked out.
00:46In November 2007, the Writers Guild went on strike over getting paid when their work got reused online,
00:52back when that barely even existed.
00:54It lasted 100 days and froze the whole industry.
00:58Kring even called Entertainment Weekly from the picket line to talk about his show's ratings drop,
01:02saying,
01:03Yes, I'm picketing my own show.
01:05Without the writers or the showrunner, season two was cut from 24 episodes to 11,
01:09and a slow, stumbling season got hacked into a rushed finale.
01:13And normally, a network show can fix itself as it airs, but the strikes took that away.
01:18By the time the writers came back, critics and fans agreed the momentum was gone for good.
01:22Heroes limped through two more seasons.
01:24Its fourth and final season premiered to 5.9 million viewers, down more than 8 million from its peak,
01:30and was canceled in 2010.
01:32Nearly 20 years later, Heroes is a cautionary tale.
01:35How a labor fight can kill a hit at its peak.
01:38This week, Kring remembered Panetere not as a star,
01:41but as someone who told him to skip her agent and just pick up the phone and call me.
01:44So were you a fan of Heroes, or is this your first time hearing about it?
01:47And hey, if you like this format, let us know if you want to see more.
01:50Let us know if you want to see more.
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