Prior to his summoning Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger to jump in to solve the strike yesterday ("'I'll be back'--somebody wrote that. He didn't make that up."), the last the wider public heard from Ray Romano in stand-up mode was his complaint on the 2007 Emmy show that, "From what I hear, Frasier is screwing my wife."

Well, as strike things stand, his TV ex Patricia Heaton can only cuckold him with Kelsey Grammer through the nine episodes their Fox show, Back To You, has in the can. It would seem to be a good time to be hanging out at home a lot, what with his walk-away money (when Romano's salary per episode of Everybody Loves Raymond went up to $1.8 billion in 2003, he became television's highest paid star--over Grammer, as it happened). But there he was standing amidst an estimated 4,000 other strike-sympathetic types on the sunny, closed-to-traffic Avenue of the Stars in Century City. Before making his Schwarzenegger plea, he'd been seen handing out orange juice and bagels to the picketers in front of Paramount. Why such devotion to the cause? Said Romano:

Well, first of all it is my union-- I sat in a writers' room everyday for nine years, so they became my family as well. And I know how dependent we are--everything starts with them--so they need to get what they deserve.

A lot of people think, `Well, writers make a lot of money,' but it's feast and famine--half of `em are out of work at any given time, so I feel for these guys. They're gonna go through some hardships if this keeps up, and I want to help support `em to get what they deserve.

Although his old network boss, Les Moonves, recently told stock analysts that the Internet component for CBS "And now, obviously, all the different ways we're selling our content on the Internet is huge", most of the studio and network chiefs insist it's a crap shoot. Does Romano buy that?

I don't think anyone can deny in a couple or however many years, the Internet is going to provide your TV, everything you do is gonna be on Internet. So of course it's the way of the future--to not fight for what you deserve, for your piece of that, would be ridiculous and you'd regret it down the line.

It's already happening--now shows are on the internet gaining revenue from ad sales, and all the writers are asking is a very small piece of that profit. I understand it's negotiable, the companies don't know what their profit's gonna be, so figure out a system where you give a certain percentage and down the road you see if that's practical or not. You've got to do something. You can't say, `Zero.'

He's one guy who can match net wealth with the oligarchs. Has he had a heart-to-heart with any of them?

If you're talking about Les Moonves, who's my guy, who I owe a lot to, they're in a tough position. I'm sure there's a lot of disagreement going on here with what their beliefs are.

Right now they're probably not feeling the crunch, but it's unfortunate because everybody's gonna get hurt--the little guy, the big guy, the middle guy. So, I don't know-- I wish there was an arbitrator who could come along and do the fair thing.

With that, Romano turned to a small file of fans who had lined up patiently for a word or an autograph. Onstage, the presentation ranged from an opening stir-em-up folk tune from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello (followed by his band mate Zach De La Rocha's murkier offiering), a call-and-response session from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a brief talk by TV mandarin Norman Lear ("I was here when we struck against the Pharaoh"), a cordial invite to the AMPTP from negotiator John Bowman ("Come back to the table, baby"), and a cordial screw-you from WGA West President Patric Verrone: "We're shutting down production and kicking corporate ass."

Meanwhile, a youthful, shirt-and-tie-clad group of agents from Creative Artists circulated among the red-shirted crowd with treats, as traffic piled up at nearby choke points and news helicopters buzzed overhead. By around noon, Day 5 had seen its highlight, and the strikers started to filter out to other locations, to continue their picketing before a long weekend that would probably include some heavy pondering as to the near future. One was heard to remark, "Well, I better hurry home and not do my rewrite."