Last-minute bid to avert Hollywood writers’ strike
Glenn Chapman

LOS ANGELES—Last-minute talks were under way Sunday to avert a strike by Hollywood screen writers demanding a share of the cash film and television studios bring in from DVDs and online distribution of shows.
If the 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) walk out Monday as threatened, it is likely to cause popular shows to be yanked off air and throw the US film and television industry into crisis. “If anything is going to come out of this it is going to take a long time,” WGA spokeswoman Sherry Goldman told AFP after talks began at an undisclosed location in Los Angeles on Sunday morning.
“The biggest sticking point is new media, new technology. Our mantra is, ‘if they get paid, we get paid’.” Writers are demanding a greater share of residual profits from television series sold on DVDs as well as improved pay schedules for programs shown on the Internet, cellular phones, and other new media outlets.
Producers acknowledge that online viewing is increasing and promise to study the issue, but argue that it is too early to say how profitable it will be. “If they aren’t making any money, then why are they trying so hard to protect it?” Goldman asked rhetorically while saying film and television studios have refused to budge on the point.
“If they try new things and don’t make money then why not give us 2.5 percent of nothing?” Writers get 1.2 percent of revenues from shows streamed online for one-time viewing but get nothing from content downloaded to own from websites such as iTunes.
“Our contract is four years old and this technology has boomed,” Goldman said. “We need to get paid for new media,” she said, rattling off new-fangled ways movies now are viewed, including “webisodes,” “mobisodes” and “snippets.” “More of this is being shown on computer screens and we get nothing,” she said.
For example, if an entire blockbuster film supported by ads is shown free of charge on the Internet, writers get no money because studios label the display “promotional.” The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has refused to discuss anything related to new media in negotiations during the past three months, Goldman said.
“There is no common ground,” the union spokeswoman said. Producers reject the guild’s demands as unworkable and too expensive, setting the stage for the first major strike by Hollywood writers in nearly 20 years.
The strike call came after talks between the guild and the AMPTP broke down hours before an existing agreement expired on October 31. “We are very disappointed with ... the action they took,” Nicholas Counter, president of the AMPTP, said of the unionists.
Counter contends that the union’s public argument is laden with “falsehoods, misstatements and inaccuracies” and promised specifics at a later date. A federal mediator was called for the 11th-hour negotiating session.
Industry analysts predict a lengthy shutdown lasting several months, with one estimate of potential losses set at more than one billion dollars. A WGA strike in 1988 lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry an estimated 500 million dollars.
The immediate impact on major Hollywood studios is expected to be limited. Most of the major studios are reported to have built up portfolios of five films, with scripts and plots strong enough to overcome the possible lack of a union writer on board to execute re-writes.