Hollywood writers strike as talks fail

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HOLLYWOOD WRITERS STRIKE AS TALKS FAIL
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller]
Hollywood's film and television writers went on strike early this morning after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a deal with the major studios failed Sunday. Despite the aid of a federal mediator and back-channel talks between top writers and studio executives, the sides were ultimately too far apart to bridge the massive divide between them and avert the first writers strike in nearly two decades. After three months of contentious negotiations, talks broke down Wednesday night when the writers' three-year contract expired. Although they made minimal headway on some issues Sunday, the parties could not come to terms on such key issues as how much writers are paid when their shows are sold online. The question now is no longer whether or when they will strike, but how long a walkout will last and how much pain it will inflict. Both sides are girding for what many believe will be a long and debilitating strike, potentially more disruptive than the 22-week walkout by writers in 1988, which cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million. "Once it starts, it's going to get ugly," said one of the guild's strike captains Sunday.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-strike5nov05,1,168711...
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* Hollywood writers will go on strike
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20071105/d_topstrip05.art.htm

* Networks look for possible upsides
Curtailed spending on pilots is one possibility as TV executives draft plans to replace shows in the face of a strike.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-networks5nov05,1,7174...

* Hollywood writers begin strike after talks collapse
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&st...

* Writer-producers caught in middle of strike
Perhaps no group of Hollywood professionals faces the first screenwriters' strike in almost 20 years with greater internal conflict and angst than the scribes who produce TV shows.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=filmNews&storyID=200...

NEW MEDIA, NEW VALUE, OLD TROUBLES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] It’s been almost 20 years since the last Writers Guild of America's strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and those who do remember probably recall that everyone managed to get through it with a minimum of trauma. The question this time around is different for both the studios and the writers: will viewers be back? Just in case you haven’t been following it closely — shocking, that — the writers announced a strike to begin today over the producers’ unwillingness to give them what they figure is a fair cut of the so-called new-media revenue and to revisit the issue of compensation for DVDs. Screenwriters argue that their labors generally create programming that has very high value — value that would seem to multiply as it spread over more platforms. Media companies have a story to tell as well: If they are about to make jillions on new media, the markets don’t seem to think so. If the strike is a lengthy one, television will slowly begin to reflect that the writers’ room has emptied out. Some talk shows will hit the repeat button immediately; soap operas will dry up; and after a time, some episodic television shows will run out of new material. That leaves reality programming, sports, news, cooking shows, travelogues, entertainment news shows, documentary programs about animals, antiques and crime — and that’s not counting the movies and shows many of us have backlogged on TiVos, DVRs and Netflix. Oh yes, and the Internet: YouTube isn’t going on strike.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05carr.html?ref=todaysp...
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