By the time you read this, the Writer's Guild of America strike will be in its seventh week, with no end in sight. Television hosts are beginning to lose their patience (or, at least, their pockets are beginning to lose their depth), and with awards season already in jeopardy, the threat of scab writers begins to rear its ugly head. David Letterman's production company, showing its clout in defiance of AMPTP management solidarity, struck its own deal with the WGA in what may be a hopeful sign for the union, but the producers continue their offensive, posting recently on their own website that the strike has cost the union $151 million so far -- a figure, they claim, in excess of the revenue the strikers hoped to gain from their own proposed compensation package. Of course, since the producers and studios have continually claimed that there's no way to predict the real value of internet content, how they arrived at that figure is somewhat mysterious, not to mention the source, as Dana Harris of Variety is quick to point out. Meanwhile, Ron Galloway sides with Alec Baldwin in blaming the whole mess on the "inept" management of the WGA and predicts an end to the strike as early as mid-January as desperation sets in, while out on the picket lines, spirits seem to be pretty high despite the rock-star attitude Baldwin attributes to the WGA's Patric Verrone, even if a lot of it's attributable to the vodka-spiked Gatorade.
