With the WGA strike seeming like a distant memory (two weeks old), it's a good time to examine what the fight was over online streaming. The resulting agreement grants residuals to the writers for content streamed more than 17-days after the on-air showing, and first year shows get treated to a 24-day window. Those are some pretty favorable terms for the studios, if you ask us. Real-life analysts seem to agree, estimating that online video ad spending will swell from $1.3 billion in 2006 to $7 billion by 2012. Those online ads are prime real estate, too -- "brand recall" from them is way above that seen for broadcast TV. If "brand recall" figures like 60-percent for online video ads versus single-digits for conventional TV hold up, expect to see another WGA uprising in the future. Until then, keep these figures in mind when TV studios decry internet video as a deathknell.

[Image courtesy Today's Real Estate]

That's right, the dark period is over. The Writer's Guild has ended its strike, and now we can look forward to some of our favorite shows to watch on our HDTVs coming back sooner, later, or not at all. Thanks to our friends over at TV Squad, we've found a pretty comprehensive list at TV Guide, but here's a few of the ones we're looking forward to:

• Sooner (March/April/May): House, Grey's Anatomy, My Name is Earl, The Office, ER, all the CSI's, One Tree Hill, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville
  
• Later (Fall '08 - 2009): 24, Chuck, Heroes, Life, Pushing Daisies
• Not at all: Big Shots, Bionic Woman, Journeyman, Life is Wild

[Via TV Squad]

In case you haven't noticed, most of the best HD shows are in reruns. December is usually a month of reruns, but we've already seen an alternative season finale to Heroes, and in January when we'd normally expect to see our favorite shows come back, you can expect to see more reruns and more reality TV. There are some of our favorites that have some episodes left, like eight episodes of Lost, nine episodes of Medium, ten episodes of Battlestar Galatica, and seven episodes of Jerico. But others like the Office, Heroes, and Big Bang Theory are already out. Hopefully, the writers will get compensation for downloads before the remaining shows run out, and if not at least we'll have more time to watch all those HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

[Via ZatzNotFunny]

The ability for a group to go on strike is a fundamental right in American, and while we don't really understand what the problem is -- we'd assume the writers want more money -- we do know we're going to miss out on some HD programming. The first shows to feel the pinch are the live shows like Leno and SNL, next up is the scripted shows which mostly seem to have about 9 episodes under their belt. Luckily some HD programming is resilient like sports and reality TV -- not that there's much HD. At this point it's hard to know how long the strike will last, but if it lasts more than a few months, at least we'll finally be able to catch up on all those HD movies we've been meaning to watch. Here's a short list of our favorite shows that will go into reruns if this thing doesn't end before too long.

Heroes - Seasons will end early on Dec 3rd
Lost - Expected to have eight out of 16 episodes ready.
Medium - Will have 9 of 22 episodes completed.
Battlestar Galactica - Has 10 hours of episodes, plus a two hour movie to air this Fall.