Ten hours of bargaining presided over by a federal mediator failed to close a deal before a strike deadline set last Friday by the Writers Guild of America, which has sought a greater share of DVD and Internet revenues for its members.

The initial impact of a strike for most of the public will be felt on television. Popular late-night talk shows such as NBC's "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman," which are produced on a day-to-day basis and depend on a steady supply of topical jokes and sketches, were expected to go into immediate reruns.

Prime-time comedies such as the CBS hit "Two and a Half Men" and Kelsey Grammer's new Fox sitcom "Back to You" also are expected to be knocked out of production because they depend on a substantial amount of last-minute script rewrites.

The effect on movies will be less obvious since the major studios' screenplay pipeline is well-stocked through 2008.

As of last Monday, Newsarama officially became part of the Imaginova Network (you may already know some of Imaginova's sites like LiveScience and Space.com). In the coming days, you'll learn more about Imaginova and its mission to provide news and content for the intellectually curious - a great fit for us. Newsarama will serve as Imaginova's eyes and ears in the world of genre entertainment. We will continue to provide and improve upon our market-leading coverage of the comic book industry. Everything you've come to know and expect from Newsarama is going to get better.

And that's really the story of this day ...what you have come to expect from Newsarama -won't be changing. We will continue to guide and grow the site editorially as we have since Day 1 and the writers you have come to know and trust will come along with us for this exciting ride.

Starting now, however, we'll be armed with the resources to begin phasing in additional content and introducing new media to improve site design, functionality, and dependability, and ultimately to expand our brand of coverage to other entertainment genres you're all already interested in.

Selling baseball cards isn't the same fun for Topps that it used to be, as modern kids get distracted by video games and the Internet. But Topps also makes money on products like Bazooka bubble gum and Ring Pops. In an effort to improve its business, Topps hired Lehman Brothers in 2005 to figure out whether and how it should sell (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/12/05, "What's in the Cards for Topps?"). The company's agreement with Torrance et al. remains subject to approvals and is expected to close sometime between early July and late September.

"Over the past two years, with the assistance of Lehman Brothers, we’ve tried to examine all our opportunities and no other superior proposal has emerged in this time frame," said a spokeswoman from Topps. "In our opinion, the idea suggested by the dissidents [shareholder activists] would not result in greater value for stockholders."

Topps CEO Arthur T. Shorin is under pressure from shareholders who have agitated for change. In the summer, the hedge funds Crescendo Partners and Pembridge Capital got their respective people -- Arnaud Ajdler, Timothy Brog, and John J. Jones -- onto Topps' board, at the same time the company agreed to expand the number of board seats from nine to ten.

Now when the board voted on the offer from Eisner, only Topps' three new members opposed. Crescendo's director Arnaud Ajdler promised to campaign against the deal in a Mar. 6 letter to Topps board, criticizing them for not shopping the company around and for agreeing to sell at less than fair value.

SmashPhone will soon roll out Girls & Sports and The Meaning of Lila, with help from Creators Syndicate, a provider of comic strips to newspapers. A new comic strip called Mostly Heads will debut, too. The free service will run on an advertising model, where the ads appear before the comic strip.

The Meaning of Lila was created and written by John Forgetta, editorial director at American Greetings. Girls & Sports was created by Justin Borus and Andrew Feinstein, a former Warner Bros. animator. Mostly Heads is a new comic strip created by Darren Jones, a former E! Entertainment Network producer, and SmashPhone co-founder.

SmashPhone will charge advertisers 5 cents per frame, said co-founder Robin Rowe. "We're aiming for the top 100 companies to advertise," he said. "The usual ones like General Motors and Procter & Gamble."