Sunday, Nov. 11. 2007: strike day 7

Quote of the day: "...the third stage of grief is bargaining."

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Tired of working for (Internet) peanuts (via writers-strike.blogspot.com)

Glamor belongs to only part of Hollywood (Associated Press)

Most WGA members lead far from glamorous lives, and seldom earn beyond five figures each year. Yet like their colleagues who build sets, apply makeup and lay cable, they're the ones who keep Hollywood cranking the content.

Or not.

Writers strike could mean big changes in advertising (Reuters)

"Marketers have more alternatives than ever before on how and where to spend their money," said Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media, an independent media services company. "There's more than the 30-second TV spot. There are opportunities out there and dollars are going to follow the eyeballs."

He added: "While television still remains the entertaining center of your living room, there is some concern that the longer this strike stretches out people's habits will change."

Schwarzenegger urges end to Hollywood writers strike (International Herald Tribune)

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, known best in his pre-politics days for roles as "The Terminator," said he is talking to both the writers and the studios, urging them to settle the strike that began Monday and has already forced several network shows to stop filming.

Another strike! Broadway goes dark (Entertainment Weekly)

More than two-dozen Broadway shows are going dark Saturday, as stagehands went on strike. For the past three months, stagehands have been in contract negotiations with producers; the two sides have been at odds over work rules and staffing requirements. The strike will affect 25 shows, including such tourist favorites as Legally Blonde, Hairspray, Jersey Boys, and The Color Purple. Off Broadway shows are unaffected, and eight shows will go on as normal because those theaters, some of them nonprofits, have separate contracts with stagehands.

Hollywood cliffhanger: will militant writers leave Tinseltown in the dark? (Independent, UK)

One intriguing victim of the dispute has been a new show, originally slated to air on a Time Warner cable channel, called Scabs. A press release announcing the show said it was about "two people whose lives didn't pan out as they had hoped and seek out companies with employees striking to find jobs as line-crossing scabs". The producers initially thought they would air the show anyway, but by Thursday they had changed their minds and decided the topic was just too provocative.

The material never goes on strike (SFGate)

I'm not diminishing the value of professional writers - of any kind - but it would have been interesting, if even for a night or two, to see how David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and all the other alleged quick wits of late-night television performed without a script.

It's not as if there's a shortage of material out there. Just read the news. Sometimes the punch line comes included.

TV Writers' Strike Leaves Jilted Authors Looking For A Bully Pulpit(NY Times)

When the chemistry is right, an appearance on "The Colbert Report" or "The Daily Show" can help propel a book to best-seller status. Shortly after Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, first appeared on "The Daily Show" to promote "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower" in March, the book hit the New York Times best-seller list and rose to No. 5 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list, said David Steinberger, president and chief executive of Perseus Books, whose Basic Books imprint published "Second Chance."

The writers' strike as imagined on the series they created (Miami Herald)

How The Daily Show With Jon Stewart would handle the strike: By eviscerating the producers' bitter hypocrisy in preaching belt-tightening while personally getting richer.

How The Sopranos would handle the strike: In the middle of a scene, the screen would go black, and that would be it.

How House would handle the writers' strike: Despite seeming progress, negotiations break down suddenly, violently and mysteriously just before every act break, until the strike is miraculously resolved in the show's finale. Along the way, House makes a number of sexist remarks to Cuddy that sound mean-spirited but actually mean, "Let's get it on already!"