Striking Writers Nix New Studio Offer
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 11/30/2007 12:48:00 AM
Ending a news blackout with a blast, producers Thursday said they had made a “groundbreaking” new contract offer that could translate to $130 million in additional compensation for striking TV writers – a deal the scribes quickly attacked as a “massive rollback.”
At the end of a fourth day of negotiations this week, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers issued a brief statement about its latest offer to the Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since Nov. 5. The producers said their new offer had new proposals regarding residuals for content that is used on new-media platforms, which is the issue that has put the scribes and studios at an impasse.
But the AMPTP’s statement about its latest proposal drew a quick, detailed and lengthy blast back from the WGA, with the writers saying that not much progress was made this week when both sides were back at the bargaining table. During that period, both sides had agreed to a news blackout, which they lifted Thursday.
In their response to the AMPTP’s latest contract proposal, the writers claimed the offer they have on the table to producers would only cost the studios $151 million over three years, a little more than a 3% increase in writer earnings each year, while company revenue is projected to grow at a rate of 10%.
Regardless of the volleys back and forth, both sides are set to resume negotiations next Tuesday.
In its two-paragraph statement Thursday, the AMPTP said its “New Economic Partnership … includes groundbreaking moves in several areas of new media, including streaming, content made for new media and programming delivered over digital broadcast channels. The entire value of the New Economic Partnership will deliver more than $130 million in additional compensation above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion writers already receive each year.”
In its rejoinder, a letter signed by WGA East president Michael Winship and WGA West president Patric Verrone, the union said that “for the first three days of this week, the companies presented in essence their Nov. 4 package with not an iota of movement on any of the issues that matter to writers.”
The AMPTP’s first new proposal came Thursday morning, and “dealt only with streaming and made-for-Internet jurisdiction, and it amounts to a massive rollback.”
According to the WGA, “for streaming television episodes, the companies proposed a residual structure of a single fixed payment of less than $250 for a year's reuse of an hour-long program [compared to over $20,000 payable for a network rerun]. For theatrical product they are offering no residuals whatsoever for streaming.”
As for made-for-Internet content, the AMPTP “offered minimums that would allow a studio to produce up to a 15-minute episode of network-derived web content for a script fee of $1300. They continued to refuse to grant jurisdiction over original content for the Internet,” according to the WGA.
Finally, the guild complained that the producers had “made absolutely no move on the download formula [which they propose to pay at the DVD rate], and continue to assert that they can deem any reuse ‘promotional,’ and pay no residual [even if they replay the entire film or TV episode and even if they make money].
“The AMPTP's intractability is dispiriting news but it must also be motivating,” the WGA presidents told their members.
“Any movement on the part of these multinational conglomerates has been the result of the collective action of our membership, with the support of SAG, other unions, supportive politicians, and the general public,” they said. “We must fight on, returning to the lines on Monday in force to make it clear that we will not back down, that we will not accept a bad deal, and that we are all in this together.
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