Top 10 Reasons Why the Letterman/WGA Deal Is a Good Thing

Although this will be tough for Leno, Conan, and other fine late-night Guild writers, the wedge that it drives between networks is deeper, sharper than the wedge it drives between writers.
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10. Letterman has been a strong supporter. As he said in his last outing before the show went dark, "You think the show's not funny now, wait 'til the writers go on strike. I mean it really won't be funny."

9. The AMPTP says that we're too crazy, too ideological, too amateurish to make a deal. Oh yeah?

8. Stupid pet tricks? Somebody wrote that!

7. The Networks That Are Not CBS will be hard put to justify to their advertisers and stockholders why they're letting the competition have a real late-night show while they go forth with simulacra. (As The Canadian Press put it yesterday, "Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart all plan returns to late-night television over the next two weeks, but aside from their familiar faces, viewers may not recognize much.")

6. Because it's not plain vanilla, not just an interim deal: this is a deal we can use as a model, with cherries on top.

5. Cherries, in this case, meaning that the Letterman deal is the full MBA, complete with the New Media proposals we couldn't get the other side to move on at the Big Table. This shows our proposals are affordable. And, perhaps best of all, Worldwide Pants is taking on the liability of our contract provisions, including not only the payment terms, but also the backstop of the fair market valuation test under the MBA.

4. Like the waiver for the SAG awards, it lets people know that, when we are able to, we reward our friends.

3. Because in 1988, Letterman called management "money-grubbing scum." Out loud. In public.

2. Although this will be tough for Leno, Conan, and other fine late-night Guild writers, the wedge that it drives between networks is deeper, sharper than the wedge it drives between writers. While the companies understand ROI, only we understand solidarity.

1. While the AMPTP has been making great strides of late in terms of web graphics, Worldwide Pants still has the better logo.

Read more strike coverage on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.

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