Spring has sprung leaks in big-network lineups. Ratings shortfalls for some top series have sparked Hollywood hand-wringing on the eve of next week's fall schedule announcements. Such shows as ER, CSI: Miami, My Name Is Earl, The Simpsons and Supernatural hit all-time lows in recent weeks, and others -- including Grey's Anatomy and Cold Case -- are down sharply from last spring.

Some observers blame the writers' strike, which forced a three-month gap in most scripted series and led viewers to stray. Most series have trickled back but without the usual marketing fanfare. "I'm not convinced people realized their shows were back," says ABC prime-time research chief Larry Hyams. "It's not like there was a premiere week" that lured them.

Strike-hobbled scripted series weren't the only ones to lose ground. American Idol, Survivor and Deal or No Deal did, too, part of the typical ratings erosion as series age. "There has been significant slippage compared to normal series averages," says ad buyer John Rash of Campbell-Mithun in Minneapolis. "What's difficult to discern is if this is a post-strike media malaise that will be corrected" next fall.

But it's not as if viewers abandoned TV. Nielsen data show overall viewership is flat or up slightly from last spring. Instead, more people are watching cable. And more of them are recording shows on DVRs, now in 24% of homes, up from 16% last spring. More than 2 million Grey's viewers — 10% of its total audience — now watch the show one to seven days after it airs.

The AMPTP was quick to weigh in Wednesday with a statement praising DGA members for ratifying "the sensible labor agreement." The statement also seemed to cast an eye toward the near future, as the AMPTP still faces what are likely to be contentious contract talks with the Screen Actors Guild.

Our negotiations with DGA proved beyond any doubt that when both parties are prepared to bargain seriously, groundbreaking new media labor pacts can be reached without resorting to harmful and unnecessary strikes," the AMPTP said.

The figure includes wages lost by writers and other entertainment industry workers when the strike shut down production, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

His Tuesday estimate also represents damage done to Hollywood-dependent businesses such as limousine services and caterers in the area.

The Writers Guild of America strike began Nov. 5 and ended Feb. 12, after union members reviewed a tentative contract deal and voted to return to work.

Writing can resume immediately. If you were employed when the strike began, you should plan to report to work on Wednesday. If you're not employed at an office or other work site, call or e-mail your employer that you are resuming work. If you have been told not to report to work or resume your services, we recommend that you still notify your employer in writing of your availability to do so. Questions concerning return-to-work issues should be directed to the WGAW legal department at 323.782.4521 or the WGAE's assistant executive director Ann Toback at 212-767-7823.

The decision to begin this strike was not taken lightly and was only made after no other reasonable alternative was possible. We are profoundly aware of the economic loss these fourteen weeks have created not only for our members but so many other colleagues who work in the television and motion picture industries. Nonetheless, with the establishment of the WGA jurisdiction over new media and residual formulas based on distributor's gross revenue (among other gains) we are confident that the results are a significant achievement not only for ourselves but the entire creative community, now and in the future.

We hope to build upon the extraordinary energy, ingenuity, and solidarity that were generated by your hard work during the strike.

Moving one step closer to ending the 4-month-old strike, the board of the Writers Guild of America unanimously blessed this morning the tentative accord reached last week with the studios.

The endorsement paves the way for writers to return to work on Wednesday, pending a vote by the guild's membership to lift the strike order on Tuesday. The guild's 10,500 movie and TV writers covered by this contract are expected to ratify the new three-year agreement within 10 days.

Hollywood's top show runners, however, can return to work Monday in their capacity as producers, which includes hiring crews and getting their series ready to shoot. The strike shut down more than 60 shows and idled thousands of production workers who are anxious to return to their jobs.

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Many had expected the strike to end Monday. But at a well-attended membership meeting at the Shrine Auditorium on Saturday night, Patric Verrone, president of WGA, West, told 3,500 writers that the board would not lift the strike without letting them vote on it Tuesday.

The strike, which began Nov. 5, remains in effect until the governing boards of the two writers' guilds gauge the sense of their membership this weekend and decide whether to end the walkout. The boards are expected to meet as early as Sunday, and the strike could be over by Monday morning.

A memorandum sent to some writers guild members summarized a four-hour meeting on Friday in which union leaders briefed a group of 300 strike captains. According to the memorandum, the guild boards and negotiating committee are expected to recommend the tentative deal unanimously, but they are withholding action to end the walkout until after Saturday’s scheduled meetings.

In their e-mail message, Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast guild, and Michael Winship, his East Coast counterpart, said: "Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success."

While approval appears likely, members have warily debated the expected agreement all week, and they are certain to scrutinize the details closely at the Saturday meetings. A guild spokesman on Saturday morning declined to confirm plans for Sunday board meetings.

3:30 PM: Immediately after meeting with the strike captains, Dave Young and other WGA negotiators went back to continue working on a draft of the deal language. Said one WGA strike captain, "We were told that the other side's lawyers just keep chipping away and making changes in order to gain a few crumbs more favorable. This is a dangerous game they're playing. It's Russian roulette."

2:15 PM: I'm told the WGA leadership spent from 10 AM to 2:15 PM today briefing strike captains point by point about the deal. I'm told among the bad news is that the negotiated writer-mogul terms still call for that 17-day window for ad-embedded TV show streaming. But one prominent strike captain describes the good news to me like this: "This is a decent deal if the distributors gross turns out to be a real number. There are some protections in there, and some good points, that I didn't expect them to be able to negotiate. On Saturday, I'll be speaking in favor of the deal. Writers need to let go of some dreams. It's not a resounding and humiliating defeat of the companies. But it also doesn't let the networks and studios treat the Internet like the Wild Wild West."

Here's the magazine's statement: "After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party. We want to congratulate all of this year's nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year." This year's fete was supposed to be held at Craft.

Hollywood's striking writers and major studios have reached the outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet, people familiar with the negotiations said Saturday. A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America board as early as Friday, according to three people close to the talks who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.

The tentative deal came after two weeks of talks that culminated in a marathon bargaining session Friday that was attended by News Corp. President Peter Chernin, Walt Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger and Writers Guild of America negotiators David Young, Patrick M. Verrone and John F. Bowman. Progress had been made in previous meetings on payment for work sold online, but Friday's session saw a breakthrough on the most contentious issue: compensation for the free streaming of films and TV programs over the Internet.

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Attorneys from the studios and the guild were meeting over the weekend to discuss contract language for the proposed agreement, which would need to be ratified by the union's 10,500 members. Even before a vote by members, the strike would probably be called off if board members strongly endorse the deal.

There are some issues that have yet to be resolved, including defining what qualifies as promotion on the Internet. The debate centers on the extent to which networks can run video clips and other materials on their websites to promote TV programs before paying writers.

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Writers made some important concessions of their own earlier when they dropped demands to unionize work on animated movies and reality TV shows -- both of which had been viewed as non-starters by the studios. The agreement was negotiated on the studio side by Chernin and Iger, who had been designated by the heads of the other studios to negotiate on their behalf.

A new survey from Carat, a media communications company, found that the Hollywood writers' strike is not driving viewers away from TV but is affecting their viewing patterns, with 72 percent of respondents watching the same amount of prime-time TV than before the strike, 25 percent of people watching less and 3 percent watching more.

The survey also discovered that in addition to their typical television viewing, consumers are changing what they watch during prime time. For example, they are willing to watch different genres, watch repeat episodes and channel surf to hunt for different programs. Sixteen percent of respondents said they would continue to watch their favorite TV shows in repeats for the next three to six months and among those viewers, 21 percent said they would never lose interest. For those viewers who said they "would not" or "may not" continue to watch their favorite shows in repeats, the top choice was to go online (54 percent), followed by channel surfing until they found something else interesting to watch (51 percent). Additionally, viewers who are not willing to continue watching repeats of their favorite shows are also open to expanding their use of other entertainment options such as online (54 percent), DVDs (80 percent), magazines (30 percent) and video games (20 percent).

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood's writers and production companies eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, opening the prospect of a tentative agreement between the parties as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

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The agreement may come without renewed formal negotiations between the parties, though both sides still need to agree on specific language of key provisions. If that process goes smoothly, an agreement may be presented to the governing boards of the striking Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East by the end of next week, the people said.

The breakthrough occurred Friday after two weeks of closed-door discussions between the sides. Even if approved by leaders of the guilds, a deal would require ratification by a majority of the more than 10,000 active guild members.

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A final sticking point had been compensation for television programs that are streamed over the Internet after their initial broadcast. Companies were seeking a period during which they could stream such shows without paying a residual, and wanted to peg payments for a year of streaming at the $1,200 level established in the directors' contract. Writers were seeking 1.2 percent of the distributors' revenue from such streams as a residual. How that issue was finally resolved in the informal talks remained unclear as of Saturday afternoon.

And what about the resigned middle view, that this strike is just a harbinger of more labor battles? "There is something deep and profound going on in the country as a whole. There's a major change in technology that's ongoing, and we're adapting to it in a business negotiation," says writer-director David Koepp (Spider-Man, Jurassic Park), who's editing his new film Ghost Town when he's not picketing. Summarizing the major debate between the studios and the writers, Koepp says, "There is a philosophical disagreement over the ownership of the Internet. No one fully understands what the impact of the technology will be. Rather than one big seismic negotiation, there is going to be a series of negotiations over the next 10 years as the technology shakes out. The rhetoric on both sides can get rather hysterical because people don't understand what the parameters" of the new business model are.

These are the times when the masses need their opiates. Oops. Only 1,000 hours of Law & Order reruns are available. What about 300-pound dancing-singing celebrities trying to kill each other on a desert island? At least politics has come to the audience's rescue, providing the best soap opera/reality show on the airwaves. Who knows, maybe the populace is turning out in droves because the election is becoming the best show in town, and interactive to boot.

n a signal that informal talks to end the writers strike may be gaining momentum, the WGA has offered an olive branch to the congloms by abruptly canceling a Wall Street confab for CBS' institutional investors. The guild -- now in its 87th day of striking -- pulled the plug Wednesday without explanation on what would have been a presentation aimed at persuading investors to put pressure on CBS honcho Leslie Moonves to make a deal with the WGA.

Next Tuesday's event at the Cornell Club in Gotham would have also been designed to persuade research analysts to lower their investment ratings on CBS stock. The get-together was billed as an hourlong event to present the WGA's analysis of the strike's impact on the congloms generally and CBS specifically, featuring speeches by WGA West president Patric Verrone, WGA East prexy Michael Winship, SAG president Alan Rosenberg and writers and actors from CBS programs.

Neither side had any comment Wednesday about the confab or the informal talks, which have entered their second week under a news blackout with the goal of setting the stage for the resumption of official negotiations.

But the WGA's move to deep-six an event that could have angered the congloms will likely be interpreted by the town as a sign that the talks -- despite their slow pace -- are yielding some progress. WGA West exec director David Young noted in the invitation, sent out Sunday to research analysts, that most analysts view CBS as being "especially vulnerable" to the strike because of its concentration in network TV.

The Writers Guild of America gave its blessing last week to a picket-free Grammys. Now that the guild's board of directors has decided to sign an interim agreement for the Feb. 10 ceremony, the Grammys will escape the fate that befell this month's Golden Globes.

The Globes were stripped of stars and pomp when the guild wouldn't agree to an interim deal and the Screen Actors Guild encouraged its members to boycott the ceremony, which was reduced to a news conference.

The agreement allowing guild-covered writing for the Grammys is in support of union musicians and also will help advance writers' own quest for "a fair contract," the guild said in a statement.

"Professional musicians face many of the same issues that we do concerning fair compensation for the use of their work in new media," Patric M. Verrone, president of the guild's West Coast branch, said in the statement.

The decision to eliminate most pilots was made as the company looked for ways to cut costs in response to the Hollywood writers' strike and the slowdown in the economy, Mr. Zucker said. "It's clear we are in a recession in the United States, and we're going to have to manage our business accordingly," he said.

Networks like NBC have long relied on big-budget pilot episodes of television series in an effort to attract advertiser support for the rest of the season. But Mr. Zucker said the pilots, the first episode of a show and whose production cost has shot up to $7 million for an hour from about $3 million three years ago, were a poor indicator of the future success of a series and many never move beyond the pilot stage. "So you're spending money on programs you're not going to get," Mr. Zucker said. He said NBC might still commission "one or two" pilots a season, but would not do so as a matter of course.

Other networks are making similar calculations. A senior executive at one of NBC's competitors said Tuesday that "we will definitely do fewer pilots than we have before." This executive, who asked not to be identified because the network has yet to make its plans public, added that it had cut the number of scripts ordered for next season in half.

Mr. Zucker acknowledged that one reason for the decision was that NBC has suffered from weak prime-time ratings for the last several seasons. "Sometimes you see the world from a different perspective when you’re flat on your back," he said. "At NBC Entertainment we've been flat on our backs for the last few years."

Leading independent filmed entertainment studio Lionsgate is the latest company to sign an interim agreement with the Writers Guild of America. The company is one of the largest independent producers and distributors of motion pictures, television programming, home entertainment, family entertainment and video-on-demand content.

The agreement is similar to the deals the WGA has recently announced with United Artists, Worldwide Pants, Spyglass Entertainment, MRC, Jackson Bites, Mandate Films, and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.

"We are pleased Lionsgate has joined the growing number of companies that have signed interim agreements with the Writers Guild," said Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West, and Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, in a joint statement. "Lionsgate is considered a leader in the industry, and its signing an interim agreement again confirms that it is possible for both writers to be compensated fairly and respectfully for their work and for companies to operate profitably."

Upcoming Lionsgate films include Rambo, The Eye, Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns, Forbidden Kingdom, My Best Friend's Girl, Punisher 2, Saw 5, and The Spirit. Upcoming television series include Weeds (Showtime, fourth season), Mad Men (AMC, second season), and Fear Itself (NBC, debut season).

Using the format of a fake political debate between the writers and the movie studios, moderated by former White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers, the writers got in a couple of zingers on the gathered lawmakers.

--On coming before Congress: "We saw Charlie Wilson's War last night and are a little disappointed by the lack of strippers that we've seen here."

-- On the writers strike: "It would cost Paramount a total of $4.6 million to give the writers everything they're asking for. That's half the amount it would take to get Reese Witherspoon into a movie. Now, I ask you, what's more important to a movie: a script or half of Reese Witherspoon?" Another of the writers quipped: "Which half?"

The fake debate even had its own fake pink T-shirted protester disrupting the event, whose disruption was disrupted by a fake green T-shirted protester.

Lawmakers showed their own sense of humor, with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., donning a long black beard before coming to the lectern, saying she was growing a beard in solidarity with the writers, as late night talk show host David Letterman did briefly.

Yes, there will be many different opinions about the DGA deal and whether we should take it or not. But that is not what is being reported. You would think that Jim Brooks, Steve Gaghan, Eric Roth, John Logan, Robin Swicord, Susannah Grant, Aaron Sorkin, Callie Khouri, Tony Gilroy, Ron Harwood, Diablo Cody and a coterie of other highly-paid, award-clutching scribes are circling the Guild offices in black Priuses, waiting for the right moment to pounce and pressure us into taking the DGA deal verbatim.

Those are top screenwriters, no doubt, but I would find it strangely ironic if they were plotting subversion while picketing, working tirelessly on various Guild boards, and openly expressing their support for the strike.

So here is where my mind started to go: Could this reporting have anything to do with a well organized and very expensive PR campaign to convince WGA members that we should shut up and be grateful for what we got? But then I thought, "Come on, these are The Trades and other very reputable newspapers -- top media sources that we rely upon not just for local news, but for well-researched and independent reporting on international events. Whether it is Burbank or Baghdad, they speak with integrity, they check their sources, they get things right or they don't print it.

Seriously, what would this town be like if we couldn't trust our newspapers, our well-meaning agents and producer friends?

So, you have my apologies for questioning this undisputable fact that is so well reported. This powerful group of influential screenwriters not only exists, we should be very, very afraid of them.

Wage Increases

Compensation for all categories except directors of network prime time dramatic programs and daytime serials increases by 3.5%, each year of the contract.

Compensation for directors of network prime time dramatic programs and daytimeserials increases by 3%, each year of the contract.

Outsized increase in director's compensation on high budget basic cable dramatic programs for series in the second and subsequent seasons:

For ½ hour programs: 12% increase in daily rate and increase in guaranteed number of days to 7 days.
Results in show rate increasing from $9,009 to $11,760.

For 1-hour programs: 12% increase in daily rate and increase in guaranteed number of days to 14 days.
Results in show rate increasing from $18,010 to $23,520.


Residual Increases
Residual bases increase by 3.5%, each year of the contract, except for reruns innetwork prime time. Residuals for reruns in network prime time increaseby 3%, each year of the contract.


Healthcare
Employers continue to make health care contributions at specially negotiated rateof 8.5%, secured in the 2005 Basic Agreement to address the impact ofthe growing cost of health care on the DGA Plan. Provisions permittingdecrease in contribution rate by employers removed.

Other Provisions
Second Assistant Directors to manage locations in New York and Chicago.
Establishes a wrap supervision allowance of $50/day for the Second Assistant Director who supervises wrap on local and distant locations.
Increases incidental fees and dinner allowances for Unit Production Managers and Assistant Directors.


New Media

Jurisdiction over:
All new media content that is derivative of product already covered under current contracts.


Original content:
All original content above $15,000/minute or $300,000/program or $500,000/series, whichever is lowest.

Original content below the threshold will be covered when a DGA member is employed in the production.

Electronic Sell-Through (Paid Downloads)
More than doubles the rate currently paid by the employers on television programming to .70% above 100,000 units downloaded.

Below 100,000 breakpoint: rate will be paid at the current rates of .30% until worldwide gross receipts reach $1 million and .36% thereafter.

Increases rate paid on feature films by 80% to .65% above 50,000 units downloaded

Below 50,000 breakpoint: rate will be paid at the current rates of .30% untilworldwide gross receipts reach $1 million and .36% thereafter.

Distributor's Gross
Payments for EST will be based on distributor's gross instead of producer's gross, a key point in our negotiations. Distributor's gross is the amount received by the entity responsible for distributing the film or television program on the Internet. We would not have entered the agreement on any other basis.

Companies will be contractually obligated to give us access to their deals and data, enabling us to monitor this provision and prepare for our next negotiation. This access is new and unprecedented.

If the exhibitor or retailer is part of the producer's corporate family, wehave improved provisions for challenging any suspect transactions.

Ad-Supported Streaming:
17-day window (24-day window for series in their first season).
Pays 3% of the residual base, approximately $600 (for network prime time1-hour dramas), for each 26-week period following 17-day window, withinfirst year after initial broadcast.
Pays 2% of distributor's gross for streaming that occurs more than one year after initial broadcast.

Clips
Provides the companies with limited windows where they can distribute clips of feature films and television programs in new media to promotea program. Provides for payment for all other uses in New Media.

Sunset Provision
Allows both sides to revisit new media when the agreement expires.

The force majeure ax swung wide Monday as four TV studios -- CBS Paramount Network TV, Universal Media Studios, 20th Century Fox Television and Warner Bros. TV -- tore up dozens of overall deals.

All four issued similarly worded statements blaming the writers strike for the terminations, which are expected to save the studios tens of millions of dollars. But none came close to the nearly 30 overall deals axed at ABC Studios on Friday. CBS Par and 20th TV each dropped half that number. UMS and WBTV stayed in the single digits, with WBTV's termination tally said to be less than five deals. Like ABC Studios, CBS Par, UMS, 20th TV and WBTV mostly went after writers, producers and directors with no active projects.

CBS Par's force majeure list includes some high-profile writing and nonwriting producers: Hugh Jackman, whose Seed Prods. inked a multiyear deal at the studio in August; "The Chronicles of Narnia" producer Mark Johnson; veteran writer-producer Rene Echevarria, who co-created CBS Par's USA Network series "The 4400" (he will continue his services as exec producer on the studio's NBC drama "Medium"); the Emmy-winning "Sopranos" writing duo of Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green; Barry Schindel ("Numbers"); and John McNamara ("Fastlane").

Terms of the Weinstein deal were not released. But a person familiar with the agreement, speaking on condition of anonymity because it had yet to be completed, said it was similar to the interim deal reached by Worldwide Pants.

A central demand has been compensation for projects distributed on the Internet. Contract talks broke off on Dec. 7.

The studio alliance has downplayed the significance of the United Artists agreement and said "one-off deals" would not lead to a permanent solution of the labor dispute.

Brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein founded Miramax, which became part of the independent film movement in the 1990s and has produced a number of high-grossing movies. The Walt Disney Co. bought Miramax in the early 1990s, but the Weinstein brothers continued to run the studio until 2005, when they left to form the Weinstein Co.

The Weinstein name has been attached to award-winning films including "The English Patient," "Good Will Hunting" and "Chicago."

"The show must go on, that is one of the tenets of everything," Hanks told Reuters in London. "I am a member of the board of governors of the Academy, and we definitely want to put on a great show and honor the films that have come out in the course of the year," he said on the red carpet at the premiere of his film "Charlie Wilson's War."

Hanks said corporate bosses should remember that many people, from carpenters to caterers, were suffering as a result of the strike by about 10,500 Writers Guild of America members over their dispute with major film and TV studios. "There are caterers and carpenters ... and electricians and gaffers," the 51-year-old said. "There are a lot of people out there associated with the industry, for whom the sooner this work stoppage is over the better. "I just hope that the big guys who make big decisions up high in their corporate boardrooms and what not get down to honest bargaining and everyone can get back to work."

The star of box office hits "Forrest Gump" and "The Da Vinci Code," and twice a best actor Oscar winner, added that a shift in the way screenwriters were rewarded for their work was needed in the Internet age. "The delivery systems, the revenue streams, just the very presentation media is now going to be a brand new place," he said in a brief interview on Thursday.

The 500 affected employees -- who work in New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago, in both TV and radio -- must vote on the contract. Positions covered by the contract range from desk assistant to producer, with average base salary between $20,000 and $70,000. The union urged its members to ratify the deal. The preliminary deal struck between CBS and WGA will give the union staff raises of 3.5 percent annually plus a $3,700 contract bonus. The contract would run through April 1, 2010.

*****

"We are gratified that a tentative agreement has been reached so that CBS and its valued WGA news employees can put this chapter behind us," CBS said in a statement. "This is good news for newswriters," Patric Verrone, president of the WGA West, said, adding: "We ask CBS to come back to the table with the will to make a deal with striking film and television writers."

I'm told that, like Letterman's company, UA has accepted the very same proposals that the WGA presented to the media conglomerates when the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers walked out of contract negotiations back on December 7th. "It's the same kind of agreement that the guild made with [David Letterman's] Worldwide Pants. But 'interim agreement' is not the right word," a WGA insider explained to me. "At the end of the day, once an overall agreement is done between the WGA and AMPTP, if the terms and conditions of that agreement are more favorable to UA, they will be able to enjoy that. This essentially means that UA has the ability to be in business with the WGA."

*****

Guild sources said it definitely helped during negotiations that Cruise is a longtime SAG member and Wagner also started out as an actress before she became an agent then producer and then UA studio mogul. "They said, 'All we want to do is make movies. And we know that you can't do that without the artists, especially the ones that create the stories. And those are the writers.' "

*****

I've just been told that the Hollywood/Big Media CEOs who belong to the AMPTP are furious at MGM chairman Harry Sloan for "allowing" this WGA-United Artists deal to go through.

Every host who doesn't work for CBS - like Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert - will now face the prospect of doing improv while Mr. Letterman is doing a nightly monologue and Top 10 list composed by his usual complement of writers. Beyond those advantages, the two CBS shows are expected to be able to line up far more impressive lists of guests. That's because the Screen Actors Guild, which is supporting the writers, is explicitly directing its members - including every A-list movie and television star - to appear on the CBS shows. Alan Rosenberg, president of the actors' union, issued a statement saying that his members "will be happy" to appear on the Letterman and Ferguson shows "with union writers at work and without crossing WGA picket lines."

The Writers Guild had previously sent a message to its members that its "strike pressure" - including organized picketing - aimed at the other late-night shows would be "intense and essential in directing political and SAG-member guests to Letterman and Ferguson rather than to struck talk shows."

Describing the strike as "part of a larger paradigm shift," the AFI said the labour battle is part of "the ongoing digital revolution (that) has upended conventional economic models, and uncertainty abounds when attempting to project how an audience will receive its storytelling in the years to come and how creators will be paid for their work."

The other events cited by the AFI are:

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* The birth of the iPhone, which because of its ability to stream and download TV shows and movies is "a symbol of a public that demands its content where they want it and when they want it."

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* Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" series, which it hailed as "landmark programming in high definition."

* The hyper-tabloidization of TV news.

* Summer programming on basic cable that is redefining the traditional TV season.

"The Writers Guild has reached a binding independent agreement today with Worldwide Pants that will allow Late Night with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to return to the air with their full writing staffs. This is a comprehensive agreement that addresses the issues important to writers, particularly New Media. Worldwide Pants has accepted the very same proposals that the Guild was prepared to present to the media conglomerates when they walked out of negotiations on December 7.

Today's agreement dramatically illustrates that the Writers Guild wants to put people back to work, and that when a company comes to the table prepared to negotiate seriously a fair and reasonable deal can be reached quickly. It's time for NBC-Universal to step up to the plate and negotiate a company-wide deal that will put Jay Leno, who has supported our cause from the beginning, back on the air with his writers."

"We're happy to be going back to work, and particularly pleased to be doing it with our writers. This is not a solution to the strike, which unfortunately continues to disrupt the lives of thousands. But I hope it will be seen as a step in the right direction."

Friday negotiations between Worldwide Pants and the WGA wrapped without an agreement -- and without much details. Both sides said Friday that the talks would resume sometime next week, though it isn't clear whether that would happen Christmas Eve or the day after Christmas. It isn't likely to happen during the weekend and the negotiations might not have had the entire WGA negotiating committee in place.

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"We had a substantive discussion today with the WGA and look forward to continuing these talks next week," Worldwide Pants president and CEO Rob Burnett said Friday. Burnett had flown to Los Angeles to personally meet with the WGA negotiating committee. It wasn't clear whether the sides would meet again before Christmas. "A lively exchange of information took place," the WGA said in a terse statement. "The WGAW and WGAE will not comment further."

The Writers Guild has notified the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and dick clark productions that their requests for an agreement to allow writers to prepare material for the 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards show have been denied.

The Guild has also denied a request from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a waiver in connection with the use of clips from motion pictures and past Academy Awards shows for use during the annual Academy Awards presentation.

In letters to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, WGAW President Patric M. Verrone described the Guild's respect and admiration for both organizations, explaining that:

"Writers are engaged in a crucial struggle to achieve a collective bargaining agreement that will protect their compensation and intellectual property rights now and in the future. We must do everything we can to bring our negotiations to a swift and fair conclusion for the benefit of writers and all those who are being harmed by the companies’ failure to engage in serious negotiations."

NBC announced this morning that late-night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien would return to the air Jan. 2 with new episodes even if the writers strike was not resolved, citing a similar move by Johnny Carson during the 1988 labor stoppage.

"During the 1988 writers strike, Johnny Carson reluctantly returned to The Tonight Show' without his writers after two months," Rick Ludwin, NBC's executive vice president for late-night and prime-time series, said in a statement released by the network. "Both Jay and Conan have supported their writers during the first two months of this WGA strike and will continue to support them. However, there are hundreds of people who will be able to return to work as a result of Jay's and Conan's decision."

But unlike Carson, Leno and O'Brien are members of the Writers Guild of America. That means they will be crossing their own union's picket line when they go back on the air, unless the walkout is settled in the next two weeks. In a statement, O'Brien called himself an "ardent supporter" of the writers guild but said he was "left with a difficult decision: either go back to work and keep my staff employed or stay dark and allow 80 people, many of whom have worked for me for 14 years, to lose their jobs."

Leno said he had hoped for a quick resolution to the strike. "Now that the talks have broken down and there are no further negotiations scheduled, I feel it's my responsibility to get my 100 non-writing staff, which were laid off, back to work," he said in a statement. "We fully support our writers and I think they understand my decision."

Executives from Mr. Letterman's company said Saturday that they are hopeful they will have an interim agreement in place with the guild as early as this week. That could potentially put Mr. Letterman at an enormous advantage over most of his late-night colleagues.

Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" has also been urging an interim agreement and would begin working toward getting one in place the first thing Monday morning, according to a representative. But Mr. Letterman is in a stronger position because, unlike Mr. Stewart, his show is not owned by a network but by Mr. Letterman's independent production company, World Wide Pants. (So is the show that follows it on CBS, "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," which would return with writers under the proposed interim agreement.)

The news of Mr. Letterman's potential deal came at the same time the union took a new tack that could potentially throw the negotiations into procedural chaos. The writers' representatives said they planned on Monday to exercise a legal right to insist that the major studios and network production companies bargain with the guild individually rather than as a group. In a letter sent to members on Saturday, negotiators for the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West said: "Each signatory employer is required to bargain with us individually if we make a legal demand that it do so. We will make this demand on Monday."

The writers' move was aimed at breaking what has been, at least in public, a united front by a small number of media conglomerates - General Electric, News Corporation, Sony, Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom and CBS - whose entertainment units dominate the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group. In a statement, the producers alliance immediately dismissed the move as "grasping for straws." J. Nicholas Counter III, president of the the alliance, said in an interview that his group remains the bargaining agent for each of the represented companies, whether they proceed individually or together.

What is the AMPTP? The AMPTP, or Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, is a collection of kindly gentlemen who create and distribute all of your favorite screen-based entertainment. Did you like Snow White when you were a kid? The AMPTP made that. How do you feel about "American Idol," The Bourne Ultimatum and everything Will Smith has ever done? That's the AMPTP, too.

You're welcome.

What is this disagreement you have with the Writers Guild of America? It boils down to a difference of opinion. They want us to pay them for their work, which would literally[1] bankrupt Hollywood and prevent us from creating these movies and television shows. We, on the other hand, want to keep making movies and television shows, so that people can be happy, and violent crime will fall.

I am convinced that you are correct when you say the writers' demands are unreasonable. I don't even have to look at the actual math behind this claim, because I trust you. But what did you offer them instead? We offered them a chance to be a part of what we call "The New Economic Partnership." Basically—

Stop right there. Your use of capital letters proves you mean business. You guys must be in the right. Thank you.

Why does the WGA hate freedom and democracy so much? It's unclear. Big corporations have given the world electricity, affordable cornmeal, and "Two and a Half Men." What have unions ever given us? Answer: Communism and a disgustingly high minimum wage.

Hang on. I just looked at their demands and they seem kind of reasonable. Why don't you just pay them? Reasonable? They are asking for an amount of money that would literally[2] bankrupt all six major studios and weaken our national defense! What kind of question is that? Who are you?

A terrorist who hates your country. Oh. Well, there you go.

Monday’s Star Trek themed day for the WGA writers strike is picking up a number of Trek stars to come out and show their support. The list of actors includes series stars Anthony Montgomery, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, Walter Koenig, and Armin Shimerman. Many Trek recurring guest stars will be there as well such as Chase Masterson, Gary Graham and Vaughan Armstrong (with his band). More stars are also expected to show, but can't be sure until tomorrow.

Of course there are also quite of few 'star' writers coming as well, including Ron Moore, Ira Steven Behr, and Harlan Ellison. The newest stars of the Trek writing club, Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman are also expected to take time out from their work as executive producers on the new Star Trek to show their support. Trek veteran writers Bradley Weddle, David Thompson, David Goodman, Chris Black, Bradley Thompson, David Gerrold, Ken Lazebnik, Jane Espenson, and Mike Sussman will be on hand as well.

You can come too! Fans are also invited to come show their support for Star Trek and the writers.

If you are interested in attending, the check in spot is the Windsor Gate. The event runs from 11-3 on Monday at Paramount Pictures at 5555 Melrose in Hollywood.

1. The AMPTP offer for Internet streaming is $252.94. Unchanged. Well, actually, that's only for hour-long TV shows. Half-hour programs would get $139.15. To be fair, that's not really the offer. If the corporations themselves decide that these reruns are "promotional," then the writers get zero. (In dollar terms that's $0.00.)

2. The AMPTP corporations offer for original content written for the Internet is zero ($0.00). Unchanged. Mathematically you could say that they quadrupled their previous offer, since zero times four is still zero.

3. The AMPTP corporations offer is to pay 1/3 of a penny for each dollar royalty downloading videos. Unchanged. There is a rumor that they also offered to add a lump of coal, but the rumor isn't true.

4. The AMPTP gave an ultimatum that unless writers dropped several issues without the corporations giving anything in return, they would not even negotiate. This is known among circus folk as "demanding that someone negotiate with themselves." It's considered a Really Bad Thing by most people. It's considered a really stupid thing by the rest.

5. And then the executives from the AMPTP called off negotiations and walked out. There is no record of whether anyone said, "And to all a good night," as they departed.

AMPTP BREAKS OFF NEGOTIATIONS

Today, after three days of discussions, the AMPTP came back to us with a proposal that included a total rejection of our proposal on Internet streaming of December 3rd.

They are holding to their offer of a $250 fixed residual for unlimited one year streaming after a six-week window of free use. They still insist on the DVD rate for Internet downloads.

They refuse to cover original material made for new media.

This offer was accompanied by an ultimatum: the AMPTP demands we give up several of our proposals, including Fair Market Value (our protection against vertical integration and self-dealing), animation, reality, and, most crucially, any proposal that uses distributor’s gross as a basis for residuals. This would require us to concede most of our Internet proposal as a precondition for continued bargaining. The AMPTP insists we let them do to the Internet what they did to home video.

We received a similar ultimatum through back channels prior to the discussions of November 4th. At that time, we were assured that if we took DVDs off the table, we would get a fair offer on new media issues. That offer never materialized.

We reject the idea of an ultimatum. Although a number of items we have on the table are negotiable, we cannot be forced to bargain with ourselves. The AMPTP has many proposals on the table that are unacceptable to writers, but we have never delivered ultimatums.

As we prepared our counter-offer, at 6:05 p.m., Nick Counter came and said to us, in the mediator’s presence: "We are leaving. When you write us a letter saying you will take all these items off the table, we will reschedule negotiations with you." Within minutes, the AMPTP had posted a lengthy statement announcing the breakdown of negotiations.

We remain ready and willing to negotiate, no matter how intransigent our bargaining partners are, because the stakes are simply too high. We were prepared to counter their proposal tonight, and when any of them are ready to return to the table, we’re here, ready to make a fair deal.

John F. Bowman

Chairman, Negotiating Committee

O'Brien, host of NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" will cover the salaries of his nonwriting production staff -- nearly 80 people -- for the foreseeable future, an NBC Universal spokeswoman confirmed. O'Brien will foot the payroll bill starting next week, barring a resolution in the WGA work stoppage, which wrapped its 25th day on Thursday.

*****

Like David Letterman at CBS, O'Brien made the decision to step up in a big way to take care of those who help him put on the show every night. But unlike Letterman, who owns his "Late Show," Craig Ferguson's "Late Late Show" and the Worldwide Pants production banner that employs those staffers, O'Brien is tapping his own bank account to save NBC U employees on a Peacock-owned show from getting the ax, even temporarily. O'Brien's gesture to his staff comes as his own eight-figure salary has been suspended since the strike forced his show to halt production.

O'Brien is understood to be motivated by the deep sense of loyalty that many of his staffers have shown him over the years -- and probably will continue to after he relocates from Gotham to the West Coast in 2009 to take over "The Tonight Show.