We've just obtainted the new draft of the planned Les Moonves ad to be published in tomorrow's trades: "Hey, writers—You know what? Fuck you. I'll cancel my disappointing Fall season myself, bit by bit. Goodbye, Viva Laughlin! By the time you go on strike, there won't be anything left for you to walk out on. Love, Les. PS—Tell Patric Verrone to check his mailbox. The ear in that bloody wad of Kleenex is Hugh Jackman's. Just wait until he gets four of Jimmy Smits' favorite toes on Wednesday morning when I sacrifice Cane to the cause." [Var]

Early Friday evening, the WGA announced that it had received strike authorization from 90.3 percent of its voting members, a victory the organization's leadership touted as an "historic demonstration of unity." What the Guild might not realize, however, is that when it returns to the negotiating table today, emboldened by the ability to take to the streets with the best-written picket signs in the history of labor strife, any renewed threats of a potential walkout on November 1 could be playing right into the hands of an evil cadre of media moguls excited by the prospect of having their fall TV programming mistakes wiped out by a work stoppage.

As we all await the dread-inducing tolling of the bell atop WGA headquarters that will indicate the union has received strike authorization from its membership, it seems like a good time consider the effect that the looming work stoppage is already having on the call-rolling underclass that allows the town to function. Over at Fishbowl LA, a disgruntled employee laments that Fox has decided to cut back on assistant overtime to help lessen the financial burden of a strike while leaving their bosses' expense accounts untouched:

· Finding The View to be an unacceptably highbrow discussion of topics of concern to the modern woman with the free time to watch TV during the day, Debi Mazar, Aida Turturro, and Karen Duffy are shopping around a "New Jersey take" on the format. [THR]
· As fleetingly exciting as it was when the studios dropped that residual-rollback proposal they never would have followed through on, the threat of a strike remains "high." Keep stockpiling those canned goods, everyone! [Variety]
· The CW's Online Nation earns the distinction of being the first new Fall show to be canceled. Somewhere, a trio of underachieving, modern-day Neanderthals breathe a sigh of relief that they've survived the initial round of network executions. [THR]

Have the studios finally decided it's time to stomp out the flaming bag of crazy they've allowed to burn on the negotiating room floor throughout their contract talks with the WGA? In a statement posted to the AMPTP's website, they've announced that they're going to drop their plan to recoup their costs before mailing out the little green residuals envelopes that keep now-filthy-rich visionaries like Marc Cherry from starving to death while they dream up their lucrative hits. But for now they're holding their ground on the Guild's proposal to increase their home video residuals, pledging to fight to the death to protect the buggering their shrewd forebears gave the writers on that issue years ago.

· The studios and networks are "outraged" with the WGA's strike rules, which AMPTP president Nick Counter says are "filled with threats of fines, punishment and blacklisting," and have threatened to sue the Guild if tries to interfere with its members' contractual delivery of all the rushed material they're trying to stockpile to help them survive a work stoppage. Unsurprisingly, the WGA has told the producers to invest the time they're spending worrying about its rules coming up with less ridiculous proposals. [Variety]
· A&E casts Benjamin Bratt as the lead in its pilot The Cleaner, instantly giving the project a legitimacy on the level of an average network series likely to be canceled after five poorly rated episodes. [THR]

Catching a strong whiff of the fetid stench of fear wafting off everyone currently drawing a paycheck in the entertainment industry, today's LAT offers up two pieces on the looming™ writers strike that seems increasingly inevitable every time the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers break from their negotiating sessions to issue dueling press releases decrying the other side's commitment to destroying Hollywood with their unchecked greed. In his column on a possible strike's impact on the TV landscape, Scott Collins travels back to 1988 in his Labor Strife Wayback Machine to see if there are any lessons to be learned from the network schedules resulting from that year's crippling work stoppage:

· The WGA, in an aggressive measure meant to show the studios that the protracted ball-tickling session that's defined the negotiations until now must come to an end, has redrafted and broadened their strike rules to now allow for "pug-faced studio types so much as looking at us funny." [Variety]
· Hollywood's dreamy consciences George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio may team up for Warner Bros.'s adaptation of Farragut North, a play loosely based on the Howard Dean campaign. (Sorry Jake, torture-lovers not invited to the party.) [Variety]
· The rumors are true! After 50 years, NBC is moving from its legendary plot in Burbank to a spot across the street from Universal Studios. NBC plans to sell the real estate to a single wholesale retail giant, who'll develop it into independent nation state Costcovia, where every man, woman, and child is guaranteed a pickle-barrel-sized container of mayonnaise. [Variety]
· Private Practice's audience continues to grow, and Pushing Daisies won its timeslot despite coming down from its premiere numbers. Bionic Woman, however continues to plunge steadily since its first week, throwing the future of Isaiah Washington's triumphant comeback into question. [THR]
· Medium creator Glenn Gordon Caron gets a two-year deal at CBS, mainly on the strength of his Patricia-Arquette's-Rack-in-3D initiatives. [THR]

While we realize that the doomsday pronouncements now being issued with increasing frequency by both the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers following bargaining sessions in which the only thing being discussed seriously is which side is more committed to destroying Hollywood contain their fair share of public posturing, that knowledge doesn't stop our sphincters from reflexively tightening following each bellicose statement lamenting the inevitability of a disastrous work-stoppage.

Just in case you were looking for some cheery news to take with you into the weekend, contract talks between the Writers Guild and the studios ended for the week with these encouraging words from the AMPTP: "We have had six across-the-table sessions and have been met with only silence and stonewalling from the WGA leadership. We have attempted to engage on major issues, but no dialogue has been forthcoming from the WGA leadership. This is the most frustrating and futile attempt at bargaining that anyone on the AMPTP negotiating team has encountered in guild negotiation history. The WGA leadership apparently has no intention to bargain in good faith. The WGA leadership is hidebound to strike. We are farther apart today than when we started, and the only outcome we see is a disaster engineered by the present leadership of the WGA." At least they stopped short of telling the WGA membership they should head to CostCo to start stockpiling the canned peaches and bottled water they'll need to survive the coming apocalypse. Happy Friday! [TV Week]

Yesterday, the leadership of the Writers Guild sent out an e-mail blast asking its scribe army for strike authorization, hoping that letting the entire industry know that they've requested the ballistic launch codes from their membership will force the studios to take their just-revived contract negotiations seriously:

Even billionaire moguls like DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg are worried about a possible strike; if the Guilds walk out and Hollywood is crippled by a prolonged work stoppage, he might have to temporarily halt the expensive restoration of the damaged floors in his $28 million Deer Valley chalet, lest his "mad money" savings account come dangerously close to dipping below ten figures. [Reuters]

It's been a couple of weeks since we've been forced to contemplate the looming labor Armageddon that will soon bring about the end of the entertainment industry as we know it, preferring to distract ourselves with the contemplation of more pleasant matters, like daydreaming about the depilation techniques that Britney Spears uses to keep her ladyparts adequately prepped for its biweekly, post-meltdown paparazzi close-ups. Today's Variety hits our company town with an unwanted reality check (lede: "Strike fever's about to hit Hollywood hard!" [exclamation point ours]), reminding us that it's time once again for sabers to be rattled and expensive pants soiled as contract negotiations between the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers resume tomorrow.

While film executives would like nothing better than to celebrate Hollywood's unprecedented $4 billion summer by boasting about the current quality of their cinematic product and commissioning a two-page spread in the trades depicting the heads of the major studios slathering their naked bodies in peanut butter and rolling around in stacks of hundred-dollar bills the size of freshly raked autumn leaf piles, they know that the looming labor war with the various guilds requires public restraint over showy exuberance. In today's NY Times story on the studios' ongoing attempts to remind everyone about how producing nine-figure-grossing blockbusters is a terrible way to make money, execs cry poor while WGA officials lick their chops over every report of another box office record shattered:

Abandoning the quaint saber-rattling that has marked the run-up to the official start of negotiations for a new contract with the Writers Guild on Monday, the studios have apparently decided to cast aside their clattering blades in favor of a new nuke-dangling strategy intended to let the greedy scribes know they're not afraid to flatten the entire town if that guarantees more reliable corporate profitability.