MOLI VIEW™

With the New York Post reporting that NBC fired 90 percent of its Saturday Night Live staff on Friday and Columbia Pictures announcing that it will postpone production on Angels and Demons (director Ron Howard's big-budget prequel to The Da Vinci Code), it appears that the Writers Guild of America is starting to see big results — both positive and negative — from the strike it launched November 5.

Seeking a portion of revenues generated by Internet broadcasts and re-broadcasts, the WGA announced Friday that it will resume negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Studios beginning November 26. Both organizations are keeping mum about the nature of the talks, but speculation is that writers will hold fast to their demand for a reorganization of Internet broadcast residuals.

"What the writers are asking for — a small percentage of revenues from new media — is reasonable and something that companies can easily afford," David Young, executive director and chief negotiator for the Writers Guild of America, West, wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. "Today, we get nothing from streaming videos of TV shows. The companies say they can't predict the future. But they don't have to; the future is already here. Your computer is already a television, and you can watch Lost or Heroes on it right now for free."

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