UPDATE 5-Writers Guild leaders urge end to Hollywood strike

(Adds details of deal; quotes from New York meeting)

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Union leaders for striking Hollywood writers said they have reached a tentative contract deal with studios and urged members on Saturday to support it, calling for an end to a three-month walkout that has crippled TV production and overshadowed Oscar season.

The breakthrough was announced via e-mail to the 10,500 Writers Guild of America (WGA) members who launched the union's first strike in 20 years on Nov. 5 in a dispute centering on compensation for work distributed over the Internet.

The mood among many of the thousands of writers streaming to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for a closed-door briefing on terms of the deal Saturday night was largely upbeat. So was the sentiment of those who emerged hours earlier from a meeting of hundreds of union members in New York.

The governing boards of the union's East and West Coast branches were expected to formally endorse the pact on Sunday. They also could vote then to order striking writers back to work as early as Monday while the deal is submitted for ratification by the rank-and-file.

"While this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve ... our strike has been a success," WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship said in their memo.

Their message emphasized gains achieved for "a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery."

"It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, 'When they get paid, we get paid,'" they said.