In the writers' strike, lots of sniping signifying nothing Can't we all get along? Not if we're TV and movie writers or the studio bosses they worked for until going on strike two months ago. Whatever joy the nation felt over the long holiday break was not particularly shared by the Writers Guild of America or the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. They chose to snipe instead. And for all the heat on both sides to reach a settlement, no new talks are scheduled, with both sides now looking to outside forces to resolve the dispute in their favor. The WGA is hoping to break the will of the AMPTP by going around it to make more deals like the one it struck with David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company that allows Letterman and Craig Ferguson to return to the air tonight with a full complement of writers and a contract that grants writers payment for their work in new media. The AMPTP is looking to cut a deal with the Directors Guild of America that would end-run the WGA with a favorable contract that would effectively become the model for the other unions, including the writers' guild. Those talks could begin next week. But don’t bet on it.   Out with the old: Northeast NY Times nixes TV listings With the rise of the internet, many newspapers have done away with the old stock quote tables, which are now easily accessible online. It appears the same thing may happen to daily TV listings. The New York Times on Monday ran an A2 “To Our Readers” item in its Northeast editions that read, “As a cost-saving measure, the daily evening television listings in The Arts and Weekend Arts sections will be discontinued, starting Jan. 1.” The move does not affect the national edition, which never carried them, or the New York edition, which continues to carry them. The move makes sense, considering newspapers’ desire to save money and today’s instant availability of TV listings from a variety of sources online, including NYTimes.com, and via on-screen programming guides. It even prompted a redesign of TV Guide a couple years ago to focus less on listings and more on celebrities. While the decision may cause some to grumble, the way it was handled was applauded by the political site Politico.com. Earlier this week it wrote: “Props to The Times for ‘cost-saving’ instead of calling it ‘handier,’ ‘easier to navigate,’ ‘more compact’ or one of the other white lies newspapers usually use when they drop a feature these days.”   Study: Germans' time in front of the tube waned in '07 It sounds like the old adage “what goes up must come down” could finally be threatening the TV world in Germany. Might the U.S. be next? The amount of time that Germans spent tuned into the goggle box in 2007 was lower than it was in 2006. This is the first time that the figure has dropped in recent times, according to a new report. The average amount of TV that Germans watched each day was 208 minutes, compared to 212 a day the year before, according to the study from research company GfK Nuremberg. The trend was more pronounced among youngsters. Kids watched 178 minutes a day in 2007, down from 184 the year before, possibly thanks to the lure of the other box in the house – the computer. The study also showed that the country’s main broadcasters lost share to smaller broadcasters.   Cincinnati's afternoon Post folds after 126 years You had to be an old news hand, one from the days when type was cast from hot lead, to know what -30- at the end of a news story meant. It meant the story was ended, over, no more to be written, so it was only fitting that in declaring its own death after 126 years, The Cincinnati Post would mark its passing with a front-page headline that read, simply, -30-. It was fitting in the sense that the paper had lived on years after many U.S. afternoon papers had folded. It was a salute to a bygone era in which many cities had two, three and even five papers publishing each day, some with editions coming out throughout the day. Back in 1950, there were 1,450 afternoon papers in the U.S.; that number had fallen to some 614 by the end of 2006. What kept the Post alive was a joint operating agreement between Gannett, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, and Scripps, owner of the Post, reached in the late ‘70s, in which the two papers combined business operations and shared revenue. But the Post's circulation had shrunk to 27,000 on weekdays, a mere tenth of what it once enjoyed, and three years ago Gannett decided not to renew the agreement when it ended at the end of 2007, leaving Scripps little choice but to close the paper, though it will keep a Kentucky edition of the paper alive as a web site, KyPost.com. Some 50 people have lost their jobs. The Post's tagline: "Give light and the people will find their own way."   Looking for Generation Y? Find them at the library. Been to the library lately? Chances are you went there for a reason other than books. According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more than half of Americans visited a library last year, and many of those visitors were drawn by something other than books. That was especially true among Generation Y, those ages 18-30, who were more likely than their elders to pay a visit to the library. Nearly two-thirds reported using computers’ internet access or other new technology at the library, and many said they used the library for problem-solving purposes. The findings were part of a greater study on information searches that involve problems. Pew concluded that “more people turn to the internet than consult experts or family members to provide information and resources.”