Hollywood writers go on strike over new-media pay

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Hollywood writers took to the picket lines Monday to begin their first strike against the US film and television industry in nearly two decades after last-ditch talks to avoid a walk-out broke down.

Writers in New York were the first to down pens, with several dozen members of the 12,000-strong Writers Guild of America (WGA) manning a picket line outside the NBC network's studios at the Rockefeller Center.

The WGA has been wrangling with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over payments from DVD and Internet broadcasts, seeking to secure a larger cut of the profits with an increase from around five cents per sale to around eight cents.

"They (the producers) just can't get away with it any more. It's just a whole bunch of corporate greed," said Peter Brash, a writer on the soap opera "As ...