What's the deal with this writers' strike you've been hearing about? Glad you asked. Unless a Hollywood-style miracle occurs, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) will likely go on strike as early as November 1. Why should we care about what a bunch of whining scribes want? No reason, except that if they walk, it may mean the end of ALL SCRIPTED ENTERTAINMENT AS WE KNOW IT, at least on network TV and most cable shows.

It's a sobering thought. Just who do these uppity writers think they are, anyway, striking? New York cabbies strike. Baseball players strike. The French pretty much invented strikes. But film and television writers? C'mon. They've already disappointed their parents by not getting real jobs. What more do they want?

Duh. More money—which the entertainment industry quaintly insists on calling "residuals."

So, set your TiVos, reorder your Netflix queues, and let us explain why you should care what happens. Reading this will be good practice for when books, reality television, and masturbation—to HGTV—are all you have left to fill those empty hours.

A LITTLE HISTORY:
The WGA has been in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) since July 16. Their current agreement expires October 31. Spooky! So why haven't the writers been able to come to an agreement with the producers? In a way, it's all your fault. Whenever you work through that TiVo backlog of How I Met Your Mother, or download The Office to your iPhone, or spring for the first season of Friday Night Lights on DVD, the AMPTP manages to squeeze a couple more shekels' profit from the same scripts. But because most of those downloads and series DVDs didn't exist in 2004, the last time the two sides met, the terms of the current contract with the studios state that WGA members receive a mere four cents per DVD.

WHAT THE WRITERS WANT
Mo' money. After watching the suits get fat reselling these shows to you suckers in different formats for the past couple years, the writers are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it any more. WGA wants its members to score much bigger residual payouts for movies and programs sold on DVD, as well as via new media outlets like the Internet and cell phones.

WHAT THE SUITS WANT
Mo' money. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is unwilling to give WGA members a larger piece of the DVD action.

WHY STRIKE NOW?
The writers want to hit the studios where it hurts. If the new prime-time shows lurch to a halt before there are enough episodes in the can for the networks to limp through the season, the studios lose money from advertisers. But rumor has it some networks would welcome a strike as an opportunity to start over, having already written off the new television season as a failure. That's great, but we might not be there waiting when they come back.

There's been minimal progress in the negotiations. The suits did abandon a plan to pay writers residuals on movies and television shows on DVDs, cable television, and the Internet only after they had recovered their costs. But the writers' union's demands for jurisdiction over reality television writers are still on the table. Talks between the two sides are at a stalemate, and the clock is ticking.

Big deal, you say. Let 'em strike. Fair enough. In 2001, the Guild and the AMPTP worked out a last-minute compromise. We could be lucky twice.

However, if they do strike on November 1 and it lasts for more than a few weeks, entertainment could get ugly. How ugly? The last time the writers went on strike was in 1988, for five months. Letterman started off his show saying he was going to fill time by receiving a shave on camera, and Fox gave the world Cops. You're welcome. Still not scared? Just remember what happened when the U.S. government shut down for not nearly that long in the 1990s: Monica Lewinsky delivered a pizza. And we all know how well that little bit of unscripted drama played out.

Yes, as difficult as it may be to believe, real live human beings, not monkeys, are responsible for crafting Two and a Half Men's nonstop bon mots. Without these artistes, often writer-producer hyphenates, coming up with new episodes of must-see TV, prime-time television will quickly devolve into a vast wasteland populated only by Kid Nation rip-offs and cheap game shows. There can't be that many midgets and malcontents out there willing to "love" New York, you know? Admit it: Man cannot live on celebreality alone.

The strike will have less of an immediate impact on movies—to start, anyway. Filmmakers have been stockpiling scripts, and agents have been frantically lining up projects for their actor clients. In the short term, expect crappier movies that would have benefited from a rewrite or twelve to be rushed into theaters. Long term, we're looking at some big-ticket sequels facing serious delays on their way to the silver screen. If the strike stretches on, scripts for lucrative properties like the next Harry Potter flick and Transformers 2 won't get written. That's right, this Thanksgiving and Fourth of July '09, potentially ruined. Forget about seeing whether Michael Gambon gays it up as Dumbledore now that J.K. Rowling has outed the Hogwarts headmaster as a homosexual. And Megatron's not much of an improviser, we hear.

Still not scared? Fine. Get ready to kiss your daily moment of zen goodbye. After they burn through reruns, Jon Stewart and his fellow late-night hosts will be the first to be silenced or resort to off-the-cuff riffing. A performer writing for himself is covered by a separate agreement with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, but the WGA has said that hosts won't be allowed to write any more material than they personally handled pre-strike. Yep, Jay Leno is fucked. Yay!

Daytime television will be the next to feel the pinch. It is a mix. Some talk shows like The Martha Stewart Show will be safe (figures), but The View will quickly devolve into chaos that'll make you yearn for the halcyon days of Rosie. And forget about the soaps. They don't do well in repeats and most series have only a month of shows banked.

What about prime time? Production on most scripted shows will shut down immediately. Some shows are totally screwed. If they've only been filming since the summer, they may have banked only enough new shows to last until the new year. And the WGA also said that writer-producers won't be allowed to write new dialogue, change "technical or stage directions," or respond to weather, accidents, or other "unforeseen contingencies." That means even shows like Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost are toast.

Instead, expect more To Catch a Predator–style "news" specials, sports, and one-off concerts. Plus, soul-killing variations on the Are You Smarter Than a... franchise, and a hell of a lot more reality television, which employs nonunion writers. So Hills fans can look forward to watching Heidi Montag's implants sag in real time while she waits for Spencer to finally pop the question.

Mouth-breathers rejoice: Family Guy has such long lead times it'll be unaffected. Oh, and American Idol is safe! Otherwise, once the WGA strikes, we're looking at Law & Order repeats, which, like the cockroaches, will outlast us all. Seacrest out!