Writers Guild Agrees to Meet Mediator
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 10/28/2007 8:07:00 PM
With their negotiations stalled, TV writers and producers are slated to meet with a federal mediator Tuesday, just a day before a looming Halloween strike deadline.
Members of the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers agreed to sit down with the mediator after an unfruitful negotiating session Friday, according to the producers’ Web site.
The site said that the mediator will be assigned by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
Writers and studios last week engaged in last-minute talks trying to reach a new contract for the scribes. The old contract expires at the end of the day Wednesday, Oct. 31.
“We worked very hard to narrow the issues and reach an agreement, but many issues remain unresolved,” AMPTP president Nick Counter said in an end-of-the day message last Friday on the producers’ Web site, adding that the session with the mediator was slated for this week.
The WGA Web site did not mention the mediator, but did say that not much progress had been made during four hours of talks Friday.
The writers and studios are at odds over a number of issues, particularly how writers should be compensated for content that appears on new-media platforms, changes in residuals on DVDs, and a proposed expansion of cable shows that would be covered by the new contract.
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