Warner Bros., which distributed some 1,000 60-day warning notices to employees on November 12, notifying them that they could be laid off as a result of the current writers' strike, is expected to begin letting many of those employees go any time after Friday, published reports said today (Wednesday). Today's Hollywood Reporter and Variety quoted a Warner Bros. spokesperson as saying that the so-called WARN notices were required under federal law, but she declined to indicate how many pink slips might be issued. The spokeswoman added, "Due to the ongoing WGA work stoppage, some studio divisions will have to lay off employees. We regret the impact this will have on our employees, and we hope to bring them back to work once the WGA strike ends." Daily Variety said that representatives of Disney Sony, DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox said that they have no similar cutbacks in the works. Meanwhile Axium International, a Hollywood payroll services company, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, one day after telling its employees not to return to work. The company did not indicate whether the writers' strike had been responsible for its plight.

Academy Awards show producer Gil Cates insists that the Oscars will be presented as scheduled on February 24, whether or not the strike of the Writers Guild of America remains in effect through that date. "We are going to do it," Cates told the Associated Press Tuesday. "I can't elaborate on how we're going to do it, because I don't want anybody to deal with the elaboration in a way that might impact its success." Added Academy President Sid Ganis: "We're not panicking. We're preparing our show, and we're moving forward." Some studio executives were skeptical, however. Harvey Weinstein of the Weinstein Co. told A.P.: "No matter what anybody says, if the WGA goes on strike and SAG is in support, then there's no Oscar show. It's as simple as that."

Comcast Chairman/CEO Brian Roberts surprised attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Tuesday by unveiling a new cable modem capable of downloading a two-hour movie in high definition in just four minutes. The same film would take more than six hours to download via a high-speed DSL modem, he said, or seven days via a dial-up modem. Roberts said that he expects millions of the modems to be delivered to Comcast subscribers by the end of the year.

New Line Cinema will follow the lead of corporate sibling Warner Bros. and release all future high-definition video product in the Blu-ray format exclusively, it indicated Tuesday. The company said that Pan's Labyrinth, released last month, would be the last New Line movie to be available in both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. The website High-Def Disc News said that New Line had canceled the upcoming HD DVD releases of Hairspray and Rush Hour 3.

The 4 percent decline in ticket sales at the U.S. box office during the fourth quarter not only bodes poorly for studios but also for newspapers, which often depend on ad revenue from the movie industry. Editor & Publisher noted Tuesday that Bank of America analyst Joe Arns is warning that The New York Times is particularly vulnerable to a hit since movie advertising together with luxury goods ads account for 15-20 percent of the newspaper's ad revenue. He reiterated Bank of America's "sell" rating on the Times.

Sean Penn, known more for his acting abilities than his directorial talent, was nevertheless among the nominees for best filmmaker announced by the Directors Guild of America Tuesday. Penn was nominated for his Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch. Among the other DGA nominees were the Coen brothers for No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood, Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton, and Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. With rare exceptions, the DGA winner goes on to win the best-director Oscar at the Academy Awards presentations.

The victory of Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary amounted to a big loss for polling companies (and, by logical extension, TV ratings companies, as well). There was general agreement expressed in the media that if pollsters who had predicted that Barack Obama would win by double digits (USA Today/Gallup had him leading Clinton by 13 percentage points) could be proven so wrong despite massive surveys of the New Hampshire population, then the news media's insistence on reporting the election as if it were a horse race ought to be reassessed. As it became clear Tuesday night that the polls had been out-and-out wrong, veteran NBC-TV newsman Tom Brokaw, brought in as a special analyst of Tuesday's election, turned to colleague Chris Matthews and remarked, "You know what I think we're going to have to do? Wait for the voters to make their judgment." Matthews responded, "Well, what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess." No, said Brokaw, there were other matters to report about the election. "I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don't begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding."

The combination of football, a game show, and the two-hour return of Law and Order to Wednesday nights turned NBC, the usual fourth-place network, into last week's first-place network. The network placed six shows in the top ten, including the No. 1 telecast of the week, its Saturday telecast of the NFL playoff game between Jacksonville and Pittsburgh. Two episodes of the NBC game show Deal or No Deal also made the top ten. Not quite getting there was NBC's American Gladiators on Sunday night, which marked the season's top premiere among viewers overall and particularly among the key 18-49-year-old demographic. Also noteworthy were big numbers for CBS's 60 Minutes and a new episode of ABC's Desperate Housewives. For the week, NBC averaged a 7.1 rating and a 12 share. CBS was in second place with a 5.7/9, while ABC and Fox tied for third with a 5.3/9.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. NBC NFL Playoff Game 2, NBC, 15.0/25; 2. NFL Playoff Pre-kickoff, NBC, 13.8/24; 3. NFL Playoff Bridge, NBC, 13.6/24; 4. AFC Wildcard Post-Game, CBS, 13.5/22; 5. Desperate Housewives, ABC, 12.0/18; 6. 60 Minutes, CBS, 11.6/18; 7. Law and Order, NBC, 8.9/14; 8. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 8.5/13; 9. Deal or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 8.2/13; 10. Deal or No Deal (Wednesday), NBC, 7.8/12; 10. Law and Order: SVU, NBC, 7.8/13.

NBC is not waiting to see how its press-conference version of the 65th Annual Golden Globes will do on Sunday before reaching out to advertisers and offering to refund the money they paid for spots on the program. Advertising Age, citing people familiar with the situation, said today (Wednesday) that the network could wind up returning as much as $10-15 million to Golden Globes advertisers. Meanwhile, the trade publication noted, ABC is also contacting media buyers who have bought spots in this year's Oscars telecast to discuss a course of action should the strike shut down that awards show, too. (On Tuesday night a taped version of the People's Choice Awards on CBS drew its smallest audience ever -- half of what it was a year ago; it averaged a 4.3/6 vs. an 8.4/13 in 2007.)

In our item Tuesday about the return of the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert shows, we noted that Stewart appeared critical of the WGA's demand to receive residuals from Internet downloads, likening them to free cheese samples at specialty food stores. Some readers have written maintaining that Stewart was actually mocking the network attitude. We based our report on comments that appeared on several blogs following the broadcast. It should be pointed out, however, that Stewart has previously complained about Viacom's efforts to prevent his show from being uploaded to video-sharing sites, arguing that those uploads effectively promote the show. By the same token, the Stewart and Colbert shows are available (legally) via iTunes at a price of $9.99 for 16 episodes -- or 62 cents per episode, a figure not likely to generate significant revenue to Viacom and Apple given the current rate of paid TV downloads. Others have also pointed out that even such a low price structure is unrealistic -- and that paying for just four or five half-hour shows at iTunes's "Multi-Pass" fee would equal the total cost of one-month's basic cable service. Daily Variety reported today that the consensus among TV executives who participated in a forum at the CES show in Las Vegas Tuesday is that paid downloads have seen "little traction" and will soon become "a thing of the past."