I have scheduled a departure date of Mid-March 08 for New Zealand. Look for your invitation to the farewell concert (performed using Guitar Hero III). Well I haven’t left L.A. yet so that means that I still get to write about LA.

So the writers of TV shows are on strike. They want a bigger piece of the pie from digital downloads. Of course they do, and they should. Selling shows via the web in a download form should have a much higher profit margin. There is no physical product or packaging, and the shipping is paid by the purchaser (the downloader uses their connection to the internet). So why not kick a few pennies back to the writers, actors, and other who are talanted enough to work it into their contract. We all learned about compound interest – those pennies add up (remember Office Space).

I do have one issue with the strike. The lack of creative slogans and signs. These guys are writer, the slogans should be more dramatic, comedic, or thriller-ish. The writers of Law and Order and CSI should have the most dramatic signs, while The Office and 30 Rock writers should have the picketers ROTFL. If I drive by the picket line of the Tonight Show and Jimmy Kimel, those guys should have new signs every night, and they should be topical.

But the strike is also an opportunity. An opportunity for some web-only programming to shine. Shows like Clark and Michael and…well mostly just Clark and Michael for now, should be pushing their new content. As the daily shows shut down due to lack of content, that writer from the mid-west with a video camera and a dream will write, shoot, and publish to the web. Someone will like it, and they will tell someone else, and so on and so forth. But for now, just watch Clark and Michael and tell me what you think.

I realize the irony of writing about a writers strike and by writing I am proving that I am not a writer nor am I on strike.