Most of the network television audience now is primarily women, but I think that's because the shows are developed to appeal to women. I don't know that there are too many shows that appeal to guys anymore. I'm not sure why that is, but I think that it may have something to do with the fact that most development staffs are women.

Every time someone does a Western movie, people flock to it. It's like, we're continually programming to people who are least likely to watch us. People in Nebraska aren't watching things on the computer, they're watching television. Why aren't we programming things for them? We only program things that appeal to New York and Los Angeles and in many ways spit on the rest of the country.

In some ways I think it [the strike] was important. I'm not sure that "worth it" is the right term, but it was important. A lot of people lost a lot of things - I was greatly concerned for our crews. Those are the people who really sort of paid. A lot of us in quiet ways did everything that we could to help people pay mortgages.

Well, it was an interesting phenomenon, because I come from a very union town - I come from Chicago. And have been involved in unions most of my life. I think in a lot of ways unions aren't necessary anymore, because what they were started for, I think a lot of those conditions don't exist. And this union is so odd, because any sort of fight we do in this union is not for us, it's for future generations.

Television viewership has been declining for a number of years. The internet has been blamed. Everything has been blamed. Except for what I think the problem is: that the networks own the shows, and they completely think that they make them. They don't any longer let the people who make shows just make them. The networks have notes about everything. They are intimately involved in every aspect of the process. And I think it's hurt the process.

We don't have a whole lot of people living hand-to-mouth in the Writers Guild, we get paid really well, and a lot of the things we fought for, in my case, I can negotiate. I can negotiate higher DVD rates or anything I want, it's not going to be a minimum basic agreement. But I do think it was important to stand up to them. I do think that we got things in the deal that we wouldn't have gotten had we not stood up to them.

If you don't like me, you don't like me. You can call me anytime; I'll have an opinion on just about anything. I will also tell you if I shouldn't have an opinion on something - I just make television shows.