Why the Strikes
Some ignorance of history on view here. Writers and actors were told "wait till we see what the revenue stream is" once before, at the dawn of the DVD era, then that contract was used as a precedent to lock us out of the gusher of DVD revenues over the last two decades. The "stupidity" denounced by the CEOs is a direct reaction to the studios' policy over twenty years of keeping DVD revenues away from the creatives, and what has resulted is a "never again' militancy.
As for the commenter who blamed the writers for the banality of TV, blame the execs, please. Most writers I know in TV are capable of far better than they're allowed to do, but they want to keep up payments on their mortgages, too.