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.

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.

I think there's an element to this business that writers especially are overlooked in many ways and this made everybody kind of look at us differently. I do think that an interesting thing happened during it, which was being on these picket lines and looking at the huge amount of executives coming and going that you realize don't really add much to the equation.

One of the most painful things for me was Jay Leno, Jay Leno going back on the air and saying to people that it was a choice between his writing staff and his crew, I think that really hurt a lot of show runners, because it was never a choice between our writers and our crew.

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.

Glee is only one example - there are a lot of shows, adult shows online. I just don't understand why we've decided that we want to throw everything we can out there on the Internet, I don't know how it helps us. I think being exclusive, that you can only see something on CBS, you can only see something on ABC, is a good thing.

I eternally fight internal battles about developing things that only appeal to the East Coast and the West Coast. For years I've been trying to do a Western, nobody's interested in doing a Western, how can that be?