Strike Talks Break Down, No End In Sight

Both the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have walked away from the bargaining table after the latest round of negotiations, and neither side seems to be any closer than they were at the start of the strike more than a month ago.

"Today, after three days of discussions, the AMPTP came back to us with a proposal that included a total rejection of our proposal on Internet streaming of Dec. 3," said John F. Bowman, chairman of the WGA negotiating committee, in a letter. "They are holding to their offer of a $250 fixed residual for unlimited one-year streaming after a six-week window of free use. They still insist on the DVD rate for Internet downloads. They refuse to cover original material made for new media."

On top of the rejection, the AMPTP put some conditions on the offer, according to Bowman.

"The AMPTP demands we give up several of our proposals, including Fair Market Value (our protection against vertical integration and self-dealing), animation, reality, and most crucially, any proposal that uses distributor's gross as a basis for residuals," he said. "This would require us to concede most of our Internet proposal as a precondition for continued bargaining. The AMPTP insists we let them do to the Internet what they did to home video."

The key aspect of that so-called ultimatum is Fair Market Value, something that has put all of Hollywood's unions at odds with the studios. Sometimes, in selling properties to other outlets, studios will instead sell a property to another division within their own company at a highly cut rate, meaning potential residuals that would go to actors and writers and such are greatly reduced as the network is doing nothing more than shifting money from one side to the other. David Duchovny fought with Twentieth Century Fox during the run of "The X-Files" because the studio was selling the property to another one of its subsidiaries for substantially less than what the actor felt they could've received on the open market.

The studios, however, say it's not their fault negotiations aren't going anywhere.

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