There are 39 paragraphs in Dave McNary and Josef Adalian‘s well-reported, well-composed Variety story that went up yesterday about the increasingly likelihood of a WGA strike happening on 11.1 (or perhaps in January) rather than next June, but you can boil it all down to four:

Graph #1: “Many believe a November walkout could be particularly crippling since it could affect both the current TV season and the next one. By Nov. 1, the nets will have enough episodes of current shows in the can to get them through mid-January. But the February sweeps would be decimated, and new shows would halt production well before they’d filled their initial 13 episode orders.”

Graph #2: “There are some observers, however, who think a January strike might make more strategic sense. The TV season would still be hurt, with original episodes of shows running out by late February. Pilot season would still be affected, since nets might be reluctant to lense $4 million pilot segs without scribes available to do rewrites — especially for comedies.”

Graph #3: “If scribes wait until January, they can also claim to have gone the extra mile on negotiations by working without a deal for two months. On the other hand, almost all nets have made early pilot commitments to at least two or three projects, some of which are expected to lense in December.”

Graph #4: “One industry insider believes writers will wait to see if any progress is being made before deciding to walk out. ‘If there’s absolutely no progress being made, they’ll go out,’ the insider said. ‘If there is some movement, they might give it a few more weeks.'”

Suspected militant WGA sentiment: “Make it hurt. Hit ’em hard. They talk tough, but deep down the suits are a bunch of candy-asses. As Terry Malloy said to Johnny Friendly, “Ya know, ya take them heaters away from ya and you’re nothin!’ They’re blustery and unreasonable and trying to break the union. And you can’t deal with unreasonable people.”