It remains to be seen how much money will flow to the 165 plaintiffs who participated in the class-action suit, and attorneys for both parties involved in the 10-year battle say they are not allowed to talk about Friday's settlement, which is subject to final approval by California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.

Sources close to the situation calculate that those who joined the class action early are eligible for amounts ranging from $70,000-$140,000, and in some cases more. Those who joined later could get about 40% less, and a minimum amount has been set at $250.

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Of the $70 million, $43 million will be used to pay the class members and taxes on their awards, to fund required reserves and to "activities beneficial to the settlement class members." Two-thirds of the settlement will be paid by insurance companies.

Top showrunners such as John Wells ("Southland"), Ron Moore ("Battlestar Galactica"), Victor Fresco ("Better Off Ted"), Ed Bernero ("Criminal Minds"), Carol Mendelsohn ("CSI"), Clyde Phillips ("Dexter"), Doug Ellin ("Entourage"), Seth MacFarlane ("Family Guy"), Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights"), Shonda Rhimes ("Grey's Anatomy"), David Shore ("House"), Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse ("Lost") and others have signed a statement opposing shifting two TV writing categories out of the live Emmy telecast (writing for a dramatic series and writing for a movie/miniseries).

The TV Academy announced changes to the show's format Thursday in an attempt to make the program more expedient by time-shifting eight of the 28 categories out of the live telecast. The moves will cut about 15 minutes from the three-hour program.

"Our job is to make an entertaining show that appeals to the maximum number of people but, most importantly, maintains the integrity of the Emmy brand," executive producer Don Mischer said at a teleconference last week.

Though the axed categories were split among directing, writing, acting and producing, writers point out that there were only four writing categories in the primetime telecast to begin with.

They're called "the story department." They slave over treatments and final drafts. They agonize over storytelling techniques, character development and plot twists. But are they writers? The answer is yes if you ask the 12 staff producers on the reality hit "America's Next Top Model" who went on strike July 21 to win recognition as members of the Writers Guild of America. The "Top Model" dozen have been walking a picket line outside the West Los Angeles offices of the show's executive producer Ken Mok ever since.

"Say you're watching a ('Top Model') scene with six girls standing around talking," says Kai Bowe, a striking "Top Model" associate show producer. "And then you switch to a girl in (a one-on-one) interview, and then you go back to the girls talking but with a few lines of voice-over from the interview. We're the ones who choose all of that, line by line."

Adds Bowe's fellow striker Sara Sluke, "It's not like it comes out of the camera that way." As show producers and associate show producers, they slog through an average of 200 hours of raw footage to assemble each 41-minute episode. They shape the story lines in each episode and the overarching drama for each cycle of competition. They determine how the characters are portrayed -- and they find the "red herrings" to throw in to keep things from getting too predictable, Sluke says.

The "Top Model" labor action marks an escalation of the union's efforts to organize in the reality TV arena. That push has drawn criticism from some in the industry who view it as a costly effort waged on behalf of nonmembers who are employed by the very shows that are taking jobs away from existing members.