TV on Strike: Why Hollywood Went to War over the Internet

TV on Strike examines the 2007 upheaval in the entertainment industry by telling the inside story of the hundred-day writers' strike that crippled Hollywood. The television industry's uneasy transition to the digital age was the driving force behind the most significant labor dispute of the twenty-first century.

The strike put a spotlight on how the advent of new-media distribution platforms is reshaping the traditional business models that have governed the entertainment business for decades. The uncertainty that sent writers out into the streets of Los Angeles and New York with picket signs laid bare the depth of the divide, after years of industry consolidation, between the handful of media barons who rule Hollywood and the writers whose works support the industry.

With both sides afraid of losing millions in future profits, a critical communication breakdown spurred a brief but fierce fight with repercussions that continue today. The saga of the Writers Guild of America strike is told here as seen through the eyes of key players on both sides of the negotiating table and of the foot soldiers who shocked even themselves with the strength of their resolve to fight for their rights in the face of an ambiguous future.

Cynthia Littleton is deputy editor at Variety and coauthor of Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN.

6 x 9, 288 pages, notes, index