Factoring in film and TV workers' above-average paychecks and their abrupt removal from the economy—what's called "the ripple factor"—Kyser totes up the real impact of the work stoppage as nearing $1.5 billion.

Kyser estimates that the downgrading of the Golden Globe Awards ceremony to a press conference resulted in the loss of $70 million to $80 million. That includes NBC's $15 million loss in ad revenue, as well as the cancellation of about $2.5 million worth of parties after the event.

Accompanying the losses are those of a series of smaller revenue earners, such as limo services, florists, and caterers. Kyser also estimates the cost of a similarly upended Academy Awards telecast—if it comes to that—will be around $130 million.

It's in arriving at these sorts of figures where we encounter a contradictory model from economist Jerry Nickelsburg, a professor at U.C.L.A.'s Anderson School of Business and a former Federal Reserve forecaster.

Nickelsburg is quick to note, ''We could find human-interest stories, I'm sure, of people who are suffering a lot, and one ought not to minimize that. But when looked at from the perspective of the entire the L.A. economy, [the loss] is not a huge number in the grand scheme of things.

"It takes a lot to make a dent in a $380 billion economy," he adds, "and the entire film and television industry represents between 6 percent and 7 percent of that number."

Nickelsburg recently wrote a study called "The Economic Impact of the 2007 Writers Strike on L.A.," which referred to some classic studies as well as contemporary articles.

"If you look at some incidents in he past," he says, "such as the Major League Baseball strike or the National Basketball Association strike, all the studies that have been done show that although those strikes cost the leagues and the individuals involved millions and millions in lost income, they had no measurable impact on the local economy."

Nickelsburg sees similarities in these types of strikes and the situation. "The reason for the lack of impact is that the people who were going to those particular sporting events just went to something else, and spent their money elsewhere—where someone else earned it," he says. "So, some individuals were hurt and other individuals benefited but all the studies can't find any [wider] impact."

Nickelsburg finds another local template in the grocery strike of 2004, which lasted over four months.

"The unionized checkers at Ralph's were hurt very badly, as was Ralph's—which won a Pyrrhic victory," he said. "But that's the narrow view. For Costco, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's they all benefited from what's called the substitution effect—because consumers don't sit still."

This diffusion of discretionary dollars may be of little comfort to show-business powers, especially in light of the 56 scripted dramas and comedies that have now gone dark. That is because the networks permanently lost millions of viewers to cable programming during the 1988 writers' strike.

"Some 10 percent of the viewers went over to cable TV and elsewhere and never came back," says Nickelsburg. "And if history is our guide, a portion of viewers will not return at the end of this strike."