UPDATE 2-Golden Globes scrapped for 'press conference'

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By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Hollywood's striking writers scored two victories on Monday by forcing Golden Globe Awards sponsors to cancel their traditional star-studded telecast and by reaching a deal to put writers back to work at Tom Cruise's film company.

With most nominees and presenters expected to boycott the Globes on Jan. 13 rather than cross writers' picket lines, organizers said they were scrapping the usual gala ceremony in favor of an hour-long "press conference" to be carried live as a news event on NBC.

The WGA previously refused to grant a special waiver allowing producers of the Globes to hire union writers for that show, as the union did for Monday night's lower-profile Critics Choice Awards airing on cable channel VH1.

Cancellation of the annual three-hour-plus Golden Globes show sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association marks the latest casualty of the nine-week-old strike by the Writers Guild of America against the major film and TV studios.

The Globes are closely watched as an indicator of likely contenders for the Oscars, Hollywood's top film honors, which also are under threat of WGA picketing next month.

The walkout already has brought production to a halt on all scripted prime-time TV series and derailed several high-profile movie projects, idling thousands of behind-the-camera workers in the worst labor clash to hit Hollywood in two decades.

Negotiations aimed at ending the work stoppage collapsed last month in a hail of finger-pointing and angry rhetoric. The main sticking point has been disagreement over how writers should be paid for work distributed over the Internet.

OTHER STRIKE CASUALTIES

Last month, producers for yet another show set for Tuesday night on CBS, the People's Choice Awards, decided their annual coronation of favorite film and TV stars as chosen by the public would be presented in a pre-taped "magazine" format rather as a typical awards gala.

The usual red carpet entrance of People's Choice stars was also scrapped, but it was not immediately clear whether organizers of the Golden Globes would roll out the red carpet this year, and if so, whether it would be televised.

NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association said those details remained to be decided. But the Globes spectacle, which rivals only the Oscars in glamour and glitz, was certain to be a markedly toned-down affair.

HFPA president Jorge Camara said his roughly 90-member group was "very disappointed" that "millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars celebrating 2007's outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television."

A WGA spokesman said just before Camara's announcement that the union would stick with plans to picket the Globes if the original producers, Dick Clark Prods., remain on board. An NBC spokeswoman said the scaled-back event would be produced instead by that network's news division.

The change was not expected to alter the dynamic of the standoff between the WGA and major studios, but it represented another symbolic victory for the writers.