Guess it's back to the old sign-drawing board.

Contract talks between reps from the striking Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers shut down Friday, almost certainly putting an end to the possibility that the ongoing skirmish over new-media residuals could be resolved before the New Year.

And, as usual, the warring parties are quick to blame the other guy, with the producers blaming the union's "quixotic pursuit of radical demands" for the stalemate and the writers maintaining that the "fair deal" they were promised has never materialized.

According to a statement released by the WGA, AMPTP leaders—apparently not intimidated by all of the repeats coming our way in the coming weeks—were the ones who pulled the plug on the current round of negotiations, just as the union was preparing its counter-offer. (Which, in actuality, is more like a counter-counter-counter-counter-offer.)

"We remain ready and willing to negotiate, no matter how intransigent our bargaining partners are, because the stakes are simply too high," read the statement from WGA Negotiating Committee chair John Bowman.

"We were prepared to counter their proposal tonight, and when any of them are ready to return to the table, we're here, ready to make a fair deal."

As the story goes, however, what the WGA perceives as a fair deal is more of "a completely untenable business model" as seen through the eyes of studio and network honchos, who claim that the future of new media is too unpredictable to assign it a fixed monetary value.

"Quite frankly, we're puzzled and disheartened by an ongoing WGA negotiating strategy that seems designed to delay or derail talks rather than facilitate an end to this strike," the AMPTP said in a statement Friday.

"We believe our New Economic Partnership proposal, which would increase the average working writer's salary to more than $230,000 a year, makes it possible to find common ground. And we have proved over the last five months that we want writers to participate in producers' revenues, including in theatrical and television screening, as well as other areas of new media.

"However, under no circumstances will we knowingly participate in the destruction of this business."

The AMPTP may have budged on content that streams for free over the Internet, but it's the ad-supported stuff and content produced solely for online and other digital distribution that's really sticking in the writers' collective craws.

The WGA has said that the alliance's proposal of an additional $130 million a year in new media residuals amounts to a "massive rollback."

The union suggested a plan that, by its calculations, would cost the industry $151 million over three years and amount to a 3 percent yearly salary increase per writer.

Instead, according to the WGA, the alliance is unwilling to budge from its offer of a $250 fixed residual for one year of unlimited streaming of an hour-long show and the same-old 3-cents-per-download rate (same as what they get for DVDs) for shows sold online. In contrast, writers earn about $20,000 per network repeat.

The WGA took took demand for a bigger slice of the DVD pie off the table before 10,000-some writers walked out Nov. 5.

The AMPTP is also saying now that the WGA has used the latest round of talks (negotiations resumed Nov. 26) to start hashing other grievances pertaining to reality TV and animation. (Writers believe such shows should require unionized scribes.)

"It is now absolutely clear that the WGA's organizers are determined to advance their own political ideologies and personal agendas at the expense of working writers and every other working person who depends on our industry for livelihood," the alliance's statement reads.

Regardless, as our choices for late-night entertainment have dwindled down to Nightline, Tonight Show episodes from 1995 (Johnny Depp didn't always used to wear pirate teeth to interviews) and Last Call with Carson Daly ("entertainment" is a subjective word), Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel have dipped into their own pockets to finance their nonwriting staffs' holiday seasons.
 
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have also made a deal with Comedy Central that has kept their crews employed, albeit idly, over the past month.

And soon, prime-time is going to look as cheesy as Leno's hair circa '95. Or, it could look like 1992—the 18th season of Law & Order premieres Jan. 2.

But production on a handful of films, including Tom Hanks' Da Vinci Code sequel, has been indefinitely postponed, and Heroes, House, Desperate Housewives, The Office, and dozens of others are done for the year, so even if the strike ended tomorrow the television landscape might not look normal until March or so. (Of course, that depends on whether you consider American Idol, which kicks off Jan. 15 as scheduled, to be the epitome of normality now.)

All of which just paves the way for more reality and game shows, news and sports. With an emphasis on that first one. And probably not enough of the others.