Pencils are being sent to six of America's top media executives by a campaign seeking to support striking writers.

The 'Pencils2MediaMoguls' campaign, which is backed by key showrunners including Lost's Damon Lindelof and Criminal Minds' Edward Allen Bernero, said: "Pencils have become the symbol of our cause: We are putting them down until we get a fair deal."

The campaign is selling pencils at $1 for a box of 6; the pencils are then posted to CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner president and COO Jeffrey Bewkes, Disney's Robert Iger and Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone.

The campaign is loosely modelled on the now-infamous nuts campaign to save the CBS drama Jericho, in which fans of the show posted vast quantities of peanuts to executives at the network in a reference to a line in the show's first season finale. The campaign resulted in CBS bringing the show back for a 7 episode run.