Dec 4, 2007 9:55 pm US/Pacific
Negotiations Resume Between Writers, Studios
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
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Members of the Writers Guild of America have been on strike since Nov. 5.
CBS
Negotiations continued Wednesday in the dispute between negotiators for striking writers and representatives of movie studios and television networks.
Representatives of the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers met Tuesday for the first time since Thursday in an attempt to end the dispute over pay for work distributed via the Internet, video iPods, cell phones and other new media.
Alliance officials planned to spend Tuesday night "studying what the WGA had to say (yesterday) and we look forward to returning to the bargaining table" Wednesday, an alliance statement said.
Guild representatives said its proposal would cost the studios and networks an additional $151 million over three years. The guild proposed a sliding scale that would give writers $632 for the first 100,000 views of an hour-long program on the Internet, with rates increasing at each 100,000 views after that, the Los Angeles Times reported.
After the first year, writers would receive a residual based on 2.5 percent of the revenue collected by the show distributor, according to The Times.
On Thursday, the alliance offered a proposal for a "New Economic Partnership," which it said had an "entire value" of "more than $130 million in additional compensation above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion writers already receive each year."
However, an analysis released by the guild Tuesday "tells us their offer is worth only $32 million," according to John F. Bowman, chair of the WGA Negotiating Committee.
"If you factor in the companies' regressive proposal on `promotional use' (streaming TV shows and feature films in their entirety for free) writers could potentially lose $100 million in income over the course of this contract," Bowman said.
"While we don't see how their proposal adds up to anywhere near $130 million, we greet their public willingness to make such an offer with real interest," Bowman said.
"If the AMPTP is serious about this figure, the WGA is confident we are closer to a deal than anyone has suggested and we are hopeful that the companies will respond positively to our proposal, which is a serious, reasonable and affordable attempt to bridge the gap between us."
The strike began Nov. 5. Most scripted primetime series have suspended production while many late-night talk shows have been forced into reruns.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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