The TV Zone

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You can - as Dan Rather might say - put a period, end, full-stop and exclamation mark on the writers' strike of 2007-08.

The Guild got a positive reax to the proposed deal in meetings on both coasts last night. It now goes to general membership for vote, but the strike won't be lifted until Wednesday. WGA bosses met today to make a formal pronouncement, allowing writers 48 hours to mull the deal, and then vote yea or nay - the latter, per a press conference today, considered unlikely to derail the deal announced today.

Monday was the expected start date, but instead, so-called show-runners will return to work tomorrow, setting up shop - so to speak - and preparing to re-hire all those hundreds who were fired.

There was plenty of reason for celebration by writers - anxious to end this crippling strike - though they didn't get everything they wanted at the outset. One scribe explained, "I do feel the Guild made amazing strikes [and] the two things I am most happy with are [the fact] there are no sunset clauses like the [Directors Guild]" while this deal goes to May of 2011, "not November or February which aligns us three years from now with SAG and DGA. If we didn't get stuff this round we will be stronger next go round."

What "stuff" might that be? Representing animation and reality writers for one; and Sunday morning at ...ohh, 10:30 ...it's still unclear whether writers got any residuals for DVDs. That was a key striking point, and an emotional rallying point as well, but hardly any word (best I can tell) in the proposed agreement addressing this. They got a boost in residuals for streaming and downloads, but only after so many downloads. (See below.)

Meanwhile, I share this handy Reuters wrap that goes over the numbers: All the key stats that give you an overview of the cost, human and financial, of the now-ended strike:

The following are some economic factors at stake in the strike by some 10,500 members of the Writers Guild of America.

* The motion picture and television industry generates $30 billion in annual economic activity for Los Angeles County alone.

* About 254,000 people are directly employed in the county's film and television industry -- from actors and directors to hairstylists, set designers, truck drivers and clerks. That is double the number who worked in the industry 20 years ago.

* The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. estimates at least $650 million in wages have been lost in the region's film and television industry since the strike began Nov. 5, with $1.2 billion more in lost earnings caused by a ripple effect in the local economy.

* The last major Hollywood strike was in 1988, when a 22-week walkout by the WGA delayed the start of that year's fall television season and hit the entertainment industry with at least $500 million in lost earnings.

* Production on some 60 prime-time television dramas and comedies normally filmed in the Los Angeles area were shut down by the latest strike, idling roughly 11,000 crew members.

* A private industry analysis reported by Daily Variety projects that lost spending on U.S. film and television production would reach about $3 billion if the strike were to last another two to three months, with collateral economic losses topping $5 billion.

* A key stumbling block in contract talks had been writers' demands for higher "residual" fees when their work is resold in the form of Internet downloads. The union originally sought 2.5 percent of the distributor's gross revenues, while the studios wanted to hold the rate to the equivalent of just 0.3 percent. The tentative deal would pay 0.7 percent of gross revenues, but that rate only kicks in after the first 50,000 downloads for movies and 100,000 downloads for television.

* The U.S. download-to-own market for movies and television episodes -- a small but growing chunk of entertainment revenues -- was expected to reach $315 million at the end of 2007 and nearly $1.2 billion by 2011, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

* Payments of all residuals to screenwriters amount to more than $100 million a year, according to industry figures. The union says such payments account for as much as half the income earned by "middle class" writers who make up the bulk of the WGA's membership.