• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 4, 2008

This holiday season, it was important to offer the proper in-person greeting: Extend the hand, web to web.  Maintain some sincere eye contact. Two pumps. Release.

This is what I learned on the Christmas Eve "Today" show.

New salutations are to be learned in the new year for TV writers and producers: Look into the viewers' eyes, extend your hand, and offer up two pumps of sincere TV content.

Question is: Will viewers be able to find any content? "Idol," "Celebrity Apprentice," and a few episodes of something called "Cashmere Mafia." That's it.

Media agency executives are worried all this is not enough, and they might want to intercede in the writers' talks to make sure there is fresh programming for those cold winter months.

Don't media executives have enough to do? Messing with those Starbucks-sucking, Honda-driving, phobia-intense scribes?  Writers don't know from make-goods -- only make-outs, making hay, and make-ups.

Aren't those media agency executives' lives already complicated with commercial ratings, the exploding number of reality shows, fast-forwarding DVRs -- and Google hovering over their shoulders looking to take over all the media business?

Better shift to those short-term media efforts on YouTube, V Cast, wild postings, local TV station avails of "American Idol," sandwich boards, and whatever network (and cable and syndication) TV remains.

Marketers still want long-term TV deals, but as Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer of Group M North America, has said, network TV past the fourth quarter -- via the upfront market -- is really just a futures GRP market. You don't know what programs will be around anyway.

Writers are a crazy bunch, I'm told. (Sometimes right to my face). Start them in one direction and their tomes end somewhere in Jersey. Cheeky monkeys.  Negotiate at your own risk.

Cementing the deal will take another paradigm. As any media executive knows, few specific paper contracts are done in ink, but by hand instead, with a shake and a nod of the head, or - if by phone -- a simple, "OK. Done."

A lesser financial point for scripted TV writers is that they aren't getting a fair share of those product placement dollars from advertisers. Now media buyers can add that into the mix when, and if, those negotiations start.

Remember, it's all art and commerce as long as it's written down somewhere. No shaking. Otherwise prepare to shudder .