Writer's Strike Thread

[stenbeck212]

Networks don't have to maintain the production value of game shows to keep them on the air. One set is built, and no one has to depend on writers to imagine new situations because the appeal lies in how unpredictable contestants are. Networks aren't willing to try new programming ideas with soaps either, whereas shows like The Weakest Link and The Power of 10 get coveted prime time scheduling. Even more insulting is the way game shows have evolved and adopted a serialized format with players creating drama as they're eliminated one by one until the season finale. That's basically Survivor and The Amazing Race in a nutshell, and it's not hard to identify with the participants. All of those shows reflect human nature in some way or another, and soaps can't bounce back until they remember how to do so too.

[dragonflies]

Heck who knows maybe the scabs might actually do better than the actual writers

And that's why YOUR Days would flop faster than a lead balloon

[Wendy]

The latest on the negotiations. Looks like we're headed for that strike:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/A...amp;oref=slogin

Hollywood Writers Break Off Contract Talks

Article Tools Sponsored By

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 31, 2007

Filed at 10:17 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Hollywood writers and producers broke off contract talks Wednesday night without a new deal, allowing the Writers Guild of America's current pact to expire at midnight.

It's not immediately clear whether the writers will walk off the job. A call to a union spokesman was not immediately returned.

Members of the guild recently voted to authorize their first strike since 1988 if necessary.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said no new talks were scheduled for Thursday.

[Khan]

So long, soaps, it's been good to know ya.

[bellcurve]

Regardless of how one feels about the strike...this video is friggin HILARIOUS. Love what they say at the end...and this lets me know that the strike is gonna get U-G-L-Y!

[Sylph]

Strike in limbo as contract expires

Writers meet to discuss deadline, DVD issue

By DAVE MCNARY

WGA negotiations have unraveled over the DVD issue -- seriously ratcheting up the chances of a strike.

Talks hit the wall early Wednesday evening as companies demanded that the Writers Guild of America drop its demand to increase homevid residuals. Guild negotiators responded by saying they weren't prepared to continue and gave no indication when or if they'd return.

With the guild contract expiring at 12:01 a.m. today, WGA leaders can order their 12,000 members to strike at any time -- possibly as early as tonight's membership meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

In an ominous sign, WGA strike captains have been told to instruct guild members to take their personal items home from offices at the end of work today.

The negotiating session ended as many others have, with both sides issuing statements blaming each other for being stubborn and unprofessional.

Nick Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, said the companies believe they can make a deal by moving on other issues but insisted that increasing the DVD formula is a nonstarter.

"The companies believe that movement is possible on other issues, but they cannot make any movement when confronted with your continuing efforts to increase the DVD formula, including the formula for electronic sell-through," he said. "The magnitude of that proposal alone is blocking us from making any further progress. We cannot move further as long as that issue remains on the table."

The WGA shot back, accusing the companies of being nonresponsive to its move earlier in the day toward a compromise with a package of proposals that included movement on DVDs, new media and jurisdictional issues, though it declined to provide details. It asserted that it had also taken nine proposals off the table.

"The companies returned six hours later and said they would not respond to our package until we capitulated to their Internet demand," the WGA said. "After three and a half months of bargaining, the AMPTP still has not responded to a single one of our important proposals. Every issue that matters to writers, including Internet reuse, original writing for new media, DVDs and jurisdiction, has been ignored. This is completely unacceptable."

In a troubling development, Counter warned that without the guild backing down from its DVD stance, negotiations would be at an impasse.

The DVD dispute centers on the 1985 formula, under which homevid residuals were paid on the basis of 20% of wholesale revenues -- equating to scribes receiving about 4¢ for each disc sold. The WGA's seeking a doubling of that rate, asserting it agreed to a discounted deal two decades ago to help the fledgling business survive.

Studios and nets have steadfastly nixed any boost to DVD residuals, contending the revenues are crucial to moving film and TV projects out of deficit amid sharply rising costs.

The WGA's also seeking to hike electronic sell-through revenue from1.2% of the licensing fee for each downloaded item to 2.5%.

Counter stressed that the negotiations aren't dead.

"We are ready and willing to proceed to reach agreement with you," he added. "We call upon you to take the necessary steps now to break this impasse so that bargaining can continue for our mutual benefit and the good of everyone else who works in this industry."

The Wednesday session was the the second day under the auspices of a federal mediator. Most observers believe the more likely scenario would be for the WGA to wait until next week to strike, after it has logged a few more days of negotiations -- in order to demonstrate that it's made every effort to find a settlement.

In a sign of heightened tensions, more than 100 showrunners have placed an advertisement -- titled "Pencils Down Means Pencils Down" -- in today's Daily Variety asserting that they will stop writing in the event of a strike. The scribes also pledged that they'd ask their staffs to stop writing.

And if the WGA strikes, it's not going to have a lot of company from its union brothers and sisters. The other major Hollywood unions -- SAG, the DGA, AFTRA and IATSE -- have reminded members of the "no-strike" provisions of their contracts and noted that they must live up to any agreement they've made to work.

Leo Reed, secretary-treasurer of Local 399 of the Teamsters union, has offered the only significant support to the WGA so far, telling members that they should not cross WGA picket lines -- as long as they're acting as individuals. The Teamsters represent a formidable constituency that could seriously impact production should significant numbers of its membership (more than 4,000 drivers, location managers and casting directors) heed Reed's suggestion.

"If you are going on strike, you really need the support of your fellow unions," said labor attorney Michael Asensio of the Baker Hostetler law firm. "I think the WGA is woefully short of that at this point."

Of those four unions, SAG is the only one to offer even a modicum of support for the WGA by encouraging thesps last week to join WGA pickets -- as long as they do it in their free time.

IATSE president Thomas C. Short sent an open letter Wednesday to members and locals, noting that the below-the-line union has more than 50,000 members working in film and TV production. And Short's missive warned that members honoring WGA picket lines could be fired.

"Any work stoppage may have a profound and long-lasting impact on you and your families," Short added. "The IATSE contracts contain provisions that require us to continue to honor our contracts. These 'no-strike' provisions require the IATSE to notify our members of their obligation to honor these contracts and continue working. Any individual member who chooses to honor any picket line is subject to permanent replacement."

Short has already locked horns with the WGA over its strike rules, threatening to sue the guild after it announced plans to bar WGA members from penning animated features if there's a strike -- since the IATSE covers most animated feature writing.

That threat has apparently led the WGA to soften the language in the strike rules, which had previously warned members not to negotiate or enter into any contract for any animated feature. The revised rules still carry a ban against writing for struck companies but only "encourage" members to refrain from writing for the other companies.

The altered language now reads: "With respect to all other companies, members are encouraged during the strike to refrain from negotiating or entering into a contract for the performance of writing services in connection with fully animated theatrical features, though this request is not enforceable through Guild discipline."

AFTRA instructed its 70,000 members this week that they may not perform duties covered by WGA contracts that have been performed by WGA members. The union also reminded members of the no-strike clauses in AFTRA contracts and offered only the most tepid support to the WGA.

"AFTRA members are also reminded that so long as your activities are consistent with the terms of the no-strike language of the AFTRA contract and/or your personal service contract, you may expresss your support, as an individual through non-work releated activities during non-work times to fellow union members of the WGA in their effort to achieve a fair contract."

As for the DGA, it has disputed the WGA's strike rules covering showrunners, asserting that the writer-directors must perform a variety of tasks -- such as cutting for time, bridging material and changes in stage direction -- that the WGA deemed off limits. The DGA's warned its hyphenate members that failure to perform those tasks will leave those members in breach.

[Wendy]

Latest from the L.A. Times:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stri...ewed-storylevel

Writers' Negotiating Committee Expected To Recommend A Strike

The negotiating committee of the Writers Guild of America is expected to announce to thousands of guild members gathering tonight at the Los Angeles Convention Center its recommendation that the union call a strike.

The meeting comes the day after talks on a new three-year contract between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down. The deadline for those negotiations expired at midnight Wednesday.

The final say on whether and when a strike would begin is held by the guild's East and West Coast directors, who could meet as early as Friday. Board members are expected to support the recommendation of the committee, which is headed by John F. Bowman ("Saturday Night Live") and includes writer-producers Shawn Ryan ("The Unit"), Neal Baer ("Law & Order Special Victims Unit") and Marc Cherry ("Desperate Housewives").

Despite the presence of a federal mediator and more than a dozen bargaining sessions since July, the sides couldn't reach agreement on a host of issues, with the chief sticking points being DVD payments and pay rates for films and TV shows sold over the Internet.

Guild members already voted by a 90% majority to authorize their leaders to call a strike if no agreement was reached. The meeting "will update every person on negotiations and what our next options will be," Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West, told members in a recent e-mail message.

The Writers Guild represents about 12,000 film and TV writers nationwide.

The writers previously went on strike in 1988 in an action that lasted 22 weeks.

Studios and networks have been preparing for a walkout for months, stockpiling scripts, shooting extra episodes of TV shows and changing film production schedules.

[email protected]

[Wendy]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21570821/

Writers Say They Will Go On Strike

LOS ANGELES - Television and movie screen writers said Thursday they will go on strike for the first time in nearly 20 years in a dispute over royalties.

Four writers told The Associated Press that Writers Guild of America President Patric Verrone made the announcement in a closed-door session, causing loud cheers from the crowd.

"There was a unified feeling in the room. I don't think anyone wants the strike, but people are behind the negotiation committee," writer Dave Garrett said.

Their contract expired at midnight Wednesday after talks ended abruptly, with both sides saying they were still far apart on the key issue of raising payment from the sale of DVDs and extending payment to the distribution of TV shows and film over the Internet.

While both sides have withdrawn other proposals since talks began in July, neither has budged on what the Writers Guild of America termed “the hated DVD formula,” which pays writers pennies on the sale of home video.

Writers had sought to boost that payment. They wanted the richer formula applied equally to the sale of digital downloads. They were also seeking a piece of advertising dollars generated when TV shows and films are streamed for free over the Internet.

Writers also want to be paid for creating original content for the Internet, cell phones or other digital devices.

Producers maintain that profits from DVDs largely offset the increased cost of production. They also don’t want to commit themselves to higher payment for digital distribution at a time when business models are still uncertain.

“The magnitude of that proposal alone is blocking us from making any further progress,” J. Nicholas Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, told writers Wednesday.

“We cannot move further as long as that issue remains on the table. In short, the DVD issue is a complete roadblock to any further progress.”

The issue is key to the industry because actors also are expected to fight for a larger share of DVD and digital revenue when their contract expires in June.

This breaking news story will be updated.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Toups]

CRAP!!!!

It's a shame the soap writers have to strike because it seems like the main issues have nothing to do with them! Soaps don't have DVDs or air on new media.

Is DAYS even still selling episodes on Itunes? That's the only new media I can think of.

[Sylph]

A Teamster's Letter & Union Solidarity

http://haloscan.com/tb/concerningwriters/4978469505582951112

[jfung79]

ATWT has had some Web-only content before, like that L.A. Diaries or whatever it was called.

But yeah, this is largely something that has nothing to do with soaps, but could affect soaps negatively most of all in the long run. Sad.

[Loretta3938]

With six of these soaps rated at 2.3 or lower, I am really worried about this strike. This doesn't look good for future TV viewing either. I cannot handle any more reality TV and talk shows. I wonder if any of the daytime dramas have stockpiled scripts the way some primetime shows have done?

[Cyberologist]

LOS ANGELES - Hollywood writers said they would strike for the first time in nearly 20 years but left open the door for last-minute talks to avert a crippling walkout.

Writers Guild of America President Patricia Verrone drew loud cheers when he announced in closed-door session Thursday night that the union could strike as early as Sunday, several writers told The Associated Press.

However, guild officials said privately the strike would most likely start on Monday.

Story continues below

[Sylph]

November 2, 2007

Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood

By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 — Hollywood’s two decades of labor peace shattered Thursday night, as movie and television writers declared they would embark on an industrywide strike for the first time since 1988, when both writers and Teamsters walked out.

The writers’ union said it would inform its members no later than Friday afternoon as to when the strike would begin, according to a person who attended a union gathering Thursday night at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The strike would pit union writers, whose position has been eroded by reality television and galloping technological change, against studios and networks that are backed by big corporate owners like General Electric and News Corp., but are also unsure of the future.

The walk-out threatens an instant jolt to television talk shows like “Late Night With David Letterman” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” which rely on guild writers to churn out monologues and skits. And if the strike drags on, audiences could see the eventual shutdown of soap operas, TV series and movie productions, as they exhaust their bank of ready scripts.

In the near term, a writers' strike will have an immediate impact on more than 200,000 workers in the movie and TV industry here and the thousands more who produce or sell entertainment elsewhere in the United States and abroad. The dispute may also signal more labor trouble to come, as directors and actors face similar issues when their contracts expire next June.

Over the long haul, multiple strikes could lead to a drastic overhaul of the economics of Hollywood. They could redefine the industry’s relationship with its highly unionized work force at a time when DVD sales are cooling and changing movie and TV markets have workers and companies alike vying for their perceived fair share of a yet-to-be-identified next digital bonanza.

“I’m afraid that everybody’s in for a terrible time,” said Norman Lear, the writer, producer and entrepreneur whose career spanned the disruptions of the 1980s — when Hollywood weathered five strikes by its guilds — and the years of relative peace that preceded and followed that tumultuous decade.

The leaders of the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild of America East were expected to order their roughly 12,000 members covered by a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to stop work and be assigned picket duty when the strike begins.

The strike call follows more than three months of contentious negotiations. Ultimately, the two sides gridlocked over the writers’ insistence on a sharp increase in their residuals payments for the re-use of movies and shows on DVDs and on new payments for the distribution of such works on the Internet, over cell phones and elsewhere. Producers refused to boost the DVD payments and rebuffed demands related to electronic distribution, arguing that industry economics and still-shifting technology made accommodation impossible.

In a statement issued Thursday night, J. Nicholas Counter III, president of the producers’ alliance, said: “By the W.G.A. leadership’s actions at the bargaining table, we are not surprised by tonight’s recommendation. We are ready to meet and are prepared to close this contract this weekend.”

A strike by the writers threatens to tear a hole in the economy of Southern California, even as it already copes with a collapse in home sales and widespread devastation from last month’s fires.

The entertainment industry contributes an estimated $30 billion annually, or about 7 percent, to the economy of Los Angeles County, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Show business also helps drive the local tourist economy. “If tourists see that the entertainment industry is shut down, we worry they will think the entire city is shut down,” said Mr. Kyser. He noted that restaurant business in the southeast San Fernando Valley — home to Universal Studios and the largest concentration of production — has already dropped 30 percent as anticipation of the strike grew in recent weeks.

Indeed, most of those affected by such a strike have no direct stake in its issues.

The New York-based book industry, for instance, may find studios reluctant to buy film rights to new works at a time when no writers are available to adapt them for the screen. “In the first part of a strike, buyers will be sitting and waiting to see if it gets resolved,” said Amy Schiffman, who specializes in literary sales for Hollywood’s Gersh Agency.

Similarly, thousands of businesses, whether mom-and-pop companies that train dogs for television shows or lumber yards that specialize in building materials for sets, face possibly dire consequences, some sooner than others.

“I’m really scared,” said Oren Ashkenazi, owner of TVC Television and Cinema Wardrobe Clearners, located near the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank, Calif. The cleaner processes up to 2,000 garments each night for television programs like “24” and is not set up to accept retail customers.

At Green Set, a 13-acre tree nursery that rents plants to set decorators, employees are facing sharply reduced hours. Meanwhile, owner Dan Needham, who just provided flora for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” said he is trying to break into the party business. “This is an awfully good reminder of the need to diversify,” he said.

Some may find an upside in the disruption. Starbucks thinks it might benefit from more people looking for a place to hang out, said a corporate spokeswoman. And others will make a business of financing those out of work.

“We’ve already seen an in increase in inquiries about our service,” said Steven Blume, chief operating officer of Content Partners, which buys so-called “participations” — stakes in movie and TV show income — in return for ready cash.

Talent agencies are considering layoffs. Hollywood’s development executives will be idle or reassigned. And story departments will soon see a near-halt to the flow of 100 or so new scripts and rewrites that flow through a major studio in a typical week.

That a halt should be called to so much activity stems at least in part from recent leadership changes at the West Coast guild, which is much larger than its eastern counterpart and represents a preponderance of Hollywood writers. In 2005, Patric M. Verrone, a longtime animation writer, was elected president of the western guild on a promise to shore up the declining stature of unionized writers within the industry.

By Mr. Verrone’s count, perhaps 95 percent of Hollywood’s work was done by guild writers in the 1980s. More recently, he has said, the figure dropped to about 55 percent, as companies like Viacom Inc. used non-guild writers to work on increasingly popular animated, reality and other shows for its MTV, Comedy Central or VH-1 television units.

At the same time, writers of guild-covered feature films saw their earnings decline in the last decade, as big studios like Warner Brothers or Sony Pictures Entertainment increasingly relied increasingly on specialty or genre film units that were frugal in spending on scripts, or on films acquired from outside producers who might spend less on writers than a major.

Mr. Verrone and his colleagues launched an organizing drive, cleared the guild of staff members who were seen as too close to management and vowed in the current negotiation to undo what they saw as an unfair formula that paid them too small a share of DVD sales, while establishing a more favorable pay scale for any new medium that might ultimately replace the ubiquitous discs.

In the same years, Hollywood’s networks and studios became aligned in new corporate configuration that left the big studios and networks in the hands of six big media and manufacturing conglomerates: General Electric, News Corp., Sony, Time Warner, Viacom, and the Walt Disney Company.

As entertainment executives and these often distant owners wrestled with questions of their own about eroding influence — few in Hollywood were unaware that changing technology has almost gutted the traditional music business — the prospect of a confrontation with writers, and perhaps later with similarly aggressive actors, became all but inevitable.

Perhaps doomed from the start, the current negotiations began in July with a demand by the producers: The writers had to agree to postpone setting compensation for new media until an industry group could study the matter, or accept a radical restructuring of the residuals system, under which companies would make payments only after they had recouped the cost of movies and programs.

Writers rejected both options. The producers eventually withdrew both, but refused to meet the writers’ demands. Now, the best prospect for solutions at the bargaining table may lie not with writers, but with the anticipated start of still unscheduled negotiations between producers and the Directors Guild of America.

During Hollywood’s more than 19 strike-free years, the directors sometimes reached agreements that were later followed by writers and actors — a pattern Mr. Verrone and his fellow guild leaders have promised to avoid in the current round.

Whether writers can ultimately enforce their agenda will depend much on the organizational will of an unlikely union: The West Coast guild, according to its own statistics, is about 72 percent male, 93 percent white, and includes many members who annually collect hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond guild-mandated minimum payments for the glamorous task of writing movies and television shows.

In 1988, a similar array of writers maintained their strike for five months, though not without severe internal strains and the repeated threat of secessions that ultimately did not occur.

Much about entertainment changed because of the earlier strike. Reality television began to flourish, their cheaper production costs and decent ratings appealing to both broadcast and cable networks. And a booming market in so-called “spec” scripts — presumably fed by work written at home during the walk-out — followed the strike.

Too, writers were forbidden that year even to write for the Oscar broadcast, leaving presenters to quip for themselves. And it could happen again, for the 80th Academy Awards this coming February.

“People who complain about the humor on awards shows should wait to see what they’re like without writers,” said Bruce Vilanch, the longtime gag writer, Oscars contributor, and, soon, a striking guild member.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2007/11/strike-its-a-re.html

Strike could be a reality by Monday — so expect more reality TV

Nov 2, 2007, 01:41 PM | by Lynette Rice

Categories: Movie Biz, Strike, TV Biz

A month ago, when Hollywood was in full hand-wringing mode over the potential of a writer's strike, a William Morris agent confidently declared that such a decision "would defy logic." No reasonable professional would dare to strike in the midst of a television season, right?

Wrong.

Less than 12 hours after their contract expired at midnight on Oct. 31, some 2,000-plus writers assembled in the Los Angeles Convention Center to hear union leaders declare that a strike will occur; the only question now is when. Many believe the picket lines could begin forming as early as this afternoon (at least, that's what some New York-based scribes were led to believe based on an earlier meeting), but the common wisdom is that the Writers Guild of America will inform writers to start waving the placards Monday morning, unless, of course, an 11th-hour deal is hammered out over the weekend. The goal now is to recruit some of the guild's more recognizable faces to walk the picket line, though it seems unlikely the WGA will drag Conan O'Brien out in front of 30 Rock in New York. They might, however, be able to convince 30 Rock creator Tina Fey to wave a sign or two.

As dense as some of the negotiation-speak may seem (what's all this talk about credit and separate rights, anyway?) the writers' complaints are pretty simple: every time you catch an episode of Desperate Housewives on ABC.com, creator/writer Marc Cherry (or his fellow DH scribe, who may have written that particular epsiode) doesn't get paid for it. Every time a series writer generates new content for his show's official Web page, he doesn't get paid for it. The writers also want a bigger piece of DVD profits (6 percent, up from 3 percent), so if you decide to, say, buy season one of Heroes on DVD, the scribes would get more money in their residual checks. That's what this dispute is about, give or take a few disagreements over credit and pensions and such.

So what does it mean for viewers if the strike begins Monday? Late night shows could immediately go into reruns, if David Letterman and Jay Leno decide not to write their own shows (though Letterman and Johnny Carson did this back in 1988). Cable yakkers like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report could also shut down. SNL may be forced to go black, airing repeats instead.

As for series television, most shows have about six-to-eight weeks worth of episodes written and in the can waiting to be shot, which will carry the networks through January, maybe early February. Writers who also hold the title of producer can continue to come to the set, they just can't do any kind of writing. For instance, if Jason Lee's joke falls flat during the taping of My Name is Earl, creator Greg Garcia would have to just let it go. The only sticking point that may interrupt ongoing production is if the Teamsters (i.e., the folks who drive all those production trucks) live up to their promise to not cross the picket line, which would force shows to simply go dark. If that's the case, expect even more new reality shows to debut in the next few months. "We'll be ready," says one Big Four network executive. "This is what we get paid to do. We've anticipated this for months, though honestly I thought they'd resolve it. How stupid can they be?"

As for the impact in daytime, soaps generally have about four weeks worth of episodes in the can. Once the nets burn though those originals, expect compilations of classic episodes (Victor and Nikki's first wedding! Luke and Laura reconcile — for the second time!) News programs, as well as syndicated shows like The Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy, will not be affected. As for cable series, most shows, like The Shield and Nip/Tuck, were shot months in advance so there will be no impact — unless the strike is a long one.

"It's emotion transcending logic," opines another network executive. "Obviously, they're thinking they need to strike. But this isn't like the striking garment workers. We work alongside these people every day. A lot of us are friends. We golf together. It's so weird."