If the Strike ends, will your favorite show return?

It is now looking more and more like the WGA will accept the new deal, returning television and big screen writers to their jobs. The big question up in the air now is, will *MY* favorite show return to the air this year, or simply wait until next season. This list lays out what television studios have revealed to date.

Here's hoping NBC will come to their senses, too, and return to iTunes, so we have choices about where to get our shows.

It is official: Writers strike tenative deal

It has been officially announced now that the WGA has reached a tenative deal to end the strike, and bring back scripted TV and movies. The details can be found here. Now, it just remains to be seen if shows that were interrupted by the strike (HEROES, etc.) will be continued for a full season, or if networks will start work on the next season instead.

Writers Strike Ends?

Mike Eisner is now claiming a deal has been reached and the Writers Strike is at an end. The deal was allegedly negotiated last Friday and will be presented to the rank-and-file writers guild members tomorrrow.

"A deal has been made, and they'll be back to work very soon," Eisner said, adding, "I know a deal's been made. I know it's over."

Eisner did not elaborate on terms of the agreement. He said he expects most of the media companies affected by the strike to have "small" write-downs as a result of the deal. Eisner said the deal was struck last Friday.

If true, this should be very good news for television especially. While it has been interesting to see the level of creativity on THE DAILY SHOW and other shows, it will be nice to see some NEW content for a change. Of course, even if the deal is agreed to immediately, it will still be a few months before we see the results of new writing and filming, except on the daily comedy shows.

Hollywood Writer's Strike Nears End?

CRChair and I were bemoaning only yesterday the lack of news on progress for the Hollywood writers, and now there is news that progress may actually have been made. Apparently, while the writers and hollywood studios have been mostly posing for cameras, the unsung middleman - the agent - has been working hard to get the cash flowing again.

"It's already done, basically," the insider describes. That's because of the weeks worth of groundwork by the Hollywood agents working the writers guild leadership on one side, and the studio and network moguls on the other. I was told not to expect an agreement this week. But my source thought it was possible that the strike could be settled before Christmas.

While the writer's strike is hardly on the same level as any strike that actually impacts SERVICE, it is nice to see that Hollywood is not COMPLETELY incapable of resolving its own problems. At least its labor problems. When it comes to quality, the jury is still very much out.

Writers Guild Strikes

It is official. The Hollywood Writers Guild is now on strike, which means new scripts for all scripted shows and movies have now been shelved until the dispute is resolved. This will hit television first, where daily scripted shows like The Tonight Show, The Colbert Report, and others won't have a writing staff. But it also will affect motion pictures as well.

The two major issues, as I understand them are:

1. Writers are still paid residuals on DVDs based on a "preliminary deal" designed back when they were an experimental, emerging medium. At the time, writers, actors, and directors agreed to take a much smaller residual than on VHS tapes in order to support the new format. Now that DVDs are virtually the entire market, they want them brought to parity. But studios want to keep the status quo in order to keep profits up in a time when illegal downloads are eating into the market.

2. Studios want to apply the same logic to downloadable shows that was applied to DVDs originally, since they are still an experimental emerging market. Writers feel burned by the DVD experience and want to ensure that they are not in the same place 10 years from now on the "downloadable issue.

Here is hoping both sides can come to an agreement quickly which is of benefit to both. If not, around January we may be seeing a flood of reruns and reality series, and shortly after theater chains may start to suffer from lack of content to bring in consumers.