Striking TV and movie writers chose Wall Street as a symbolic backdrop Tuesday for their demand for a bigger slice of the new-media pie, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Their argument in a nutshell: Entertainment companies brag to the investment community that the Internet is a growing revenue source for them but then tell the writers that the future is uncertain and there isn’t enough money to share.

“We can’t BEAR studio BULL,” read one picket sign.

The Writers Guild of America, East set up picket lines on a gray morning at the edge of Battery Park, a subway stop away from Wall Street but as close as municipal officials would let them get to the New York Stock Exchange and the iconic bronze sculpture of a bull. About 11 a.m., there were 65 or so marchers, but the numbers rose as the day brightened.

Around lunchtime, some of the pickets walked closer to Wall Street to hand out leaflets in the financial district.

The WGA pointed to optimistic comments about the digital future from the heads of companies such as CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. and projections from outside experts that, for example, video streaming revenue would hit $3 billion by 2010 and video downloading revenue would reach $1 billion a year later.

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