• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 2, 2008

TV writers hate the end of the year. Typically there's little to write about, since everyone is on varying holiday schedules. Few if any major announcements are made.

But not this year.

First, the WGA issues a release saying only that it has had his some "lively discussions" with the folks at Worldwide Pants, David Letterman's production company.

Worldwide Pants ended up making its own separate deal with the writers -- bolting from the consortium of networks and other major producers. But little was released in terms of actual deal points.

Second, the day before the WGA release, ABC and NBC were seemingly taking shots at each other -- shifting shows around their respective schedule with the chessboard brilliance and fury of Bobby Fischer.

NBC originally scheduled its new "Celebrity Apprentice" on Thursday, Jan. 3 to get an early jump on the new season. But then network strategists thought better of it -- because of a possible strong Bowl Championship Series Orange Bowl event on Fox, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," as well as the Iowa Caucuses on the same night.

So, NBC made the move to the less strenuous Jan. 10 - a week later. That's when ABC decided to get into the act. It moved its heavyweight "Grey's Anatomy" - the last episode that was made before the writers' strike - to the 10 as well, in theory, to also get out of the way of football and political news.

NBC then had to pick its poison - and the better poison was not to walk into a death march against "Grey's" last big original episode, until who knows ever. So it moved the "Apprentice" back to Jan. 3.

You all know the story of ABC's Stephen McPherson and NBC's Ben Silverman. Their relationship is similar to Kobe and Shaq. Lots of slammin' and jammin'.

For example, McPherson said of Silverman during the summer that he should "be a man" for openly pursuing the top NBC Entertainment job -- which ousted his college buddy Kevin Reilly. Silverman has called McPherson a "D" girl, a derogatory term describing females with low-level network programming jobs.

What's going on here? Are these just shrewd calculating programming moves at work? Or it is more personal?

ABC executives might say publicly they respect all TV shows -- whatever they are. TV reporters who cover the business can't get enough of it -- which itself makes for some juicy headlines and a chuckle or two.

Wonder if we'll still be laughing in mid-April when the strike is still going strong, and we're possibly seeing headlines about ABC moving reruns of "Desperate Housewives" to thwart a new NBC show, "Clash of the Back-Up Singers."

One thing is for sure, if the writers and producers don't work out their differences by then, we can only hope talks between the two network chiefs keep escalating into a diva fight in green slime.

We'll need it.

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