Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Who's Got A Good Knock-Knock Joke?

There is reason for cautious optimism about the strike. It looks as if the writers have done a fairly remarkable job of laying out the very complex issues of the strike, and have captured the lion's share of public support. Writers have made their case on the web -- with an estimated 750-1000 video posts, and countless other posts designed to make their point. Maybe the media conglomerates aren't lying -- they *truly* don't understand the power of the web as a distribution tool. Either way, they lost the public fight weeks ago. Nothing like a group of writers with time on their hands...

Some people, many of whom happen to be employees of the struck companies, are pointing to the return of NBC late night host Carson Daly as a sign that support for the strike is flagging and the producers are slowly but surely getting around the strike. This is the new meme, at least -- supported almost entirely by a highly dubious article in Variety about talks to bring back all the late night hosts without the writers.

One must ask where Carson will be getting his material. NBC no doubt has caboodles of cash for any writer willing to scab and get the strike over with. And so it's downright heartening to see that Carson's actually reduced to asking his dad to ask his golfing buddies to send jokes to help him through this terrible time.

Sounds like the strike is working to me.

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