BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Hollywood writers to go on strike, slam ‘gig economy.’

Television and movie writers declared late Monday that they will launch an industrywide strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with potentially widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era.

The Writers Guild of America said that its 11,500 unionized screenwriters will head to the picket lines on Tuesday. Negotiations between studios and the writers, which began in March, failed to reach a new contract before the writers’ current deal expired just after midnight, at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.

The board of directors for the WGA, which includes both a West and an East branch, voted unanimously to call for a strike, effective at the stroke of midnight. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”

Maybe wait and see if the film industry itself survives its own existential crisis before hitting the sidewalks with placards?

Could there be a small screen existential crisis as well? Writers’ Strike Might Be Late-Night TV’s Death Blow. Bee, Noah, Corden are gone … will Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon follow?

One can hope.