A pyrrhic victory

Though the writers strike is all but over, WGA heads Patric Verrone and Michael Winship hardly sounded a triumphant note in their statement:

"(A)n ongoing struggle against seven, multinational media conglomerates, no matter how successful, is exhausting, taking an enormous personal toll on our members and countless others ..."

"Continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks. The time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike."

So next week, most WGA members will be transformed from writers intrepidly striking for an important cause to plain old unemployed writers. And not a minute too soon: Had the strike continued another week, the rest of the season would likely have been scrapped, and the Oscar ceremony would’ve been seriously compromised.

Tomorrow’s Daily News explains what’ll happen next, in terms of when your favorite shows will return as well as what it might mean for writers and also in a broader, whither-television kind of way. Let's just say for now that it's ... complicated.