STUCK WITH REALITY TV FOR A WHILE?

There should be enough scripts for all your favorite shows until the first of the year, but if the strike lasts after that then it will be nothing but reruns and reality TV.

Writers Guild of America board members voted unanimously Friday to begin the strike at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time (3:01 a.m. EST) unless studios offered a better more profitable deal with a bigger cut from video sales and shows sold or streamed over the Web.The union said it would stage its first pickets in New York and Los Angeles after strike captains meet Saturday to finalize details.

The first casualty of the strike would be late-night talk shows, which are dependent on current events to fuel monologues and other entertainment.
"The Tonight Show" on NBC will go into reruns starting Monday if last-ditch negotiations fail and a strike begins, according to a network official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person lacked authorization to comment publicly.
Garth Brooks and Tommy Lee Jones were the scheduled guests.
Comedy Central has said "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" would likely go into repeats as well.
A message left seeking CBS comment on plans for "The Late Show with David Letterman" in New York was not immediately returned Friday evening.
During the 1988 writers strike, Letterman, then host of NBC's "Late Night," and longtime "Tonight Show" host Johnny Carson initially went off the air but later returned as the walkout dragged on for 22 weeks and cost the industry about $500 million.

Daytime TV, including live talk shows such as "The View" and soap operas, which typically tape about a week's worth of shows in advance, would be next to feel the impact.

AP Television Writer Lynn Elber contributed to this story.

Writers Guild Contract Expires On Oct. 31

Their contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers expires Oct. 31.
The writers' unions are demanding that they be paid higher residual fees for films and television shows on DVD. They are also asking that pay schedules be set up for other digital outlets, such as the Internet and mobile phones.
So far, the AMPTP has been unreceptive to those concerns, according to various published reports. In the case of new media, producers want to get a better sense of how programming for the Web and cell phones will be valued by the marketplace.
Several scripted television shows would be unable to air new episodes in the second half of the TV season, depending on how long a potential strike lasts. As a result, reality shows -- which do not require union writers -- might become even more ubiquitous on U.S. television.
The last Writers Guild strike occurred in 1988.
David B. Wilkerson is a reporter for MarketWatch in Chicago.

What could this mean for all our favorite shows? Alot of the shows we love will run out of episodes by early next year, so I'm sure we all hope they come to some sort of agreement very soon.