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The WGA's recently installed leadership is ushering in a new era of militancy at the Guild. Not content to demand that writers get a say (and a cut) of their participation in product placement activities and call it a day, they kept their momentum going yesterday by unleashing some guerilla maneuvers on unsuspecting network executives:

A reality TV writer rushed the stage at a breakfast panel featuring the entertainment chiefs from the six broadcast networks Tuesday in New York, demanding that the networks and TV studios provide reality writers with benefits equal to their counterparts on sitcoms and dramas.

“Would you go back to your offices and do what you know is the right thing to do?” Susan Baranoff, who has worked on shows including Starting Over and Diary of an Affair, said to the startled network executives.

At the same time, other writers and representatives from the Writers Guild of America’s East and West Coast divisions passed out bright blue flyers to the hundreds of people gathered for the International Radio & Television Society Foundation breakfast at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, asking the industry “to begin to respect us the way it does those who make sitcoms and dramas.” Reality writers, the flyer said, are denied health and pension benefits and do not receive any residual payments from syndication.

Within minutes, Baranoff and her colleagues were ushered out into the halls and the panel discussion, featuring Fox’s Peter Liguori, The WB’s David Janollari, ABC’s Stephen McPherson, UPN’s Dawn Ostroff, NBC’s Kevin Reilly and CBS’ Nina Tassler and led by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, continued on.

After the rabble-rousers were cleared from the room, the network heads quickly reached consensus about knowing the "right thing to do." They pledged that upon returning to their offices after the panel, they would round up every reality writer on their lots, line them up against a wall, and shoot them in the head at close range. If they didn't show the unions who's boss every once in a while, they'd think they can drop in for breakfast every day.