The news that the Writer's Guild and the producers would resume negotiations next Monday came as a welcome surprise, since time is running short to strike a deal that might save the season, and there hadn't been anything remotely optimistic coming from either side since the standoff began. While one can safely assume that the impact on the bottom line was the main motivator for getting the parties talking again, the potential impact of public opinion can't be ignored.

The average American spends more time watching television in a day than doing anything else besides working and sleeping, so it stands to reason that people might be more emotionally invested in the WGA strike than in your average labor dispute. The WGA isn't especially large for a national union, but because it involves television and because the economic impact is potentially enormous, the strike is getting quite a bit of attention. What's becoming clear as one follows the news is that those in the general public who are most interested in the strike have tended to be on the side of the writers.

This is not a common stance when it comes to labor disputes. Since a strike involves the withholding of labor, the knee-jerk reaction of many people is to take out their frustrations on those doing the withholding, whether the strike involves bus drivers or teachers or steelworkers. "They're lucky to even have a job" is a phrase we've all no doubt heard before. While there may be an acknowledgment that there are issues besides pure greed underlying a strike, Joe Public isn't always in the mood to hear the workers out when he's being inconvenienced.

This tendency to dislike strikers is even more extreme when those walking out are involved in the entertainment industry. The most prominent strikes involving entertainers have not been in the arena of show business, but in the field of sports. I feel safe in saying that there has never been a players' strike in a pro sports league where public opinion was on the side of the players--never mind that those who own the teams are far richer; never mind that players once had no freedom to do what is fundamental for almost everyone else, which is to allow differing parties to bid for their services. The attitude that entertainers have no right to strike when most people would kill to be in their position is prevalent.

The WGA strike is an entertainment strike, but those on the picket lines seem to have mostly avoided the scorn of the public. This is no doubt because hardly anyone in the WGA is famous, or at least not famous solely based on their writing. While the assumption is that anyone who writes for a television show is making a very good living, there does seem to be an understanding of the fact that writing is a precarious field, and virtually no WGA member is so well compensated that they can last for long without new work. And the producers who are their antagonists are not the cuddliest bunch. People have taken note of the evolution of the Forbes 400 and seen the increasing prominence of media moguls in the higher reaches of that list. When the writers say that the money is obviously out there and we only want our fair share, that position strikes a chord with many.

While there are those who think the WGA position is, if not greedy, then at least not worth striking over, most opinion leaders have been solidly with the WGA. And as we have seen with so many other areas of American life over the last 15 years, people are finding that the Internet is creating new methods of protest, and can be a powerful megaphone. Since those who spend a lot of time online are more apt to consume television programming via the new media that are at issue in the strike, it follows that the online community has been especially sympathetic to the strikers, and many bloggers have come up with ways of making their feelings known.

The most novel method of public involvement in the strike so far is a campaign inspired by previous efforts to save endangered TV shows by mailing a symbol of that show to its network. In the same way Jericho supporters flooded CBS with peanuts, WGA backers have been urged to send pencils to the network and studio heads. This stunt won't speak quite as loudly as a departure of ad dollars, but this effort as well as the brief TV bloggers blackout might have given the producers a signal that they can't count on public disgust with the strikers this time.

Of course, one thing that can't be forgotten is that the impact of the strike is still limited in terms of what people can watch, with the exception of the nighttime talk shows. Whether the public will get impatient with the WGA when their favorite shows start to disappear is something to keep an eye on. And a quick indicator of whether public support for the strikers will translate into forgoing a favorite show that is persevering without its writers will be coming as ratings for Ellen DeGeneres' non-WGA shows trickle in.

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