CUT! The scriptwriters’ strike in Hollywood is expected to wind down this week, with both writers and studios claiming peace with honour over the division of future internet spoils.

The ill-will and damage may, however, take a lot longer to fade. If indeed it does - some suspect that the economic wheel has turned, and the shift from TV drama to reality TV may be irreversible.

Tonight writers are due to gather in The Shrine, a shabby-chic auditorium in downtown Los Angeles which used to host the Oscars and Miss Universe, to hear details of the still-secret deal.

The 7,000 scribes have been prepped by their leadership not to expect too much or call off the celebrity-laden picketlines which have become a tourist attraction around Los Angeles since last November.

But if the studios have not sweetened the pot sufficiently on a percentage of future internet broadcasts, they risk irritating the real powerhouse in Hollywood - the Screen Actors Guild whose contract with the studios expires in June.

Inspired by activists such as George Clooney, SAG has been rhetorically fighting alongside the writers as a ‘proxy war” for months now, destroying last month’s Golden Globes awards ceremony by refusing to cross picketlines and still threatening this month’s Oscars - the natural deadline for any deal.

The strike, the longest in Hollywood for twenty years, has cost the Los Angeles economy at least £800m and thousands of jobs.

For studios and talent agencies, this is not all bad news: they were able to cut middle management ranks citing ‘force majure” as well as pulling the plug on projects commissioned back in the heady days of 2007 when industry leaders such as Michael Eisner, ex-Disney chief executive turned internet proselytizer, unwisely boasted it would bring riches for all.

The bones of the settlement will not be exposed until the next crop of Hollywood memoirs, but insiders are crediting a 42-year-old scriptwriter called Laeta Kalagridis as the woman who banged heads together.

Her scripts might not have been bonanzas - she wrote Oliver Stone’s horribly miscast Alexander and the gloomy remake of Bionic Woman - but, running her own strike website, she and her agent became a conduit between the union’s tough-guy negotiator David Young and the equally hard-boiled studio pointman, Peter Chernin, chairman of the Fox studios and television interests.

The union has apparently dropped its claim to represent reality TV and animation writers, another reason why reality TV driven by Brits such as Simon Fuller’s American Idol franchise is expected to drive out many pricey dramas in the years ahead, and the studios have offered a share of programmes and films streamed through the internet.

American baseball never recovered its mass popularity after the players 1994 strike, although today its far more profitable. Whilst movies have almost been untouched by the strike, when television lurches back into production over the next few days it will face a far more fragmented and lower cost future. The ‘haunted fish tank” of yore will have a few more ghosts and a lot lower spirits.

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