Strike shows fatigue factor

Are scribes making progress in talks?

As the strike enters its 89th day today, there's been no date set for the start of formal bargaining. That, combined with strike fatigue and SAG's recent militancy, has darkened the town's already gloomy mood. Some worry that after the June 30 expiration of its contract, SAG will join the writers in striking and that both guilds will stay out at least into the fall.

Sources have said that recent informal meetings between guild leaders and the moguls have remained largely unproductive on the biggest compensation issues, trying the patience of the strike-weary town.

Further complications have emerged within the WGA hierarchy itself. Some negotiating committee members are perturbed on two fronts: They have not been updated by WGA West prexy Patric Verrone, exec director David Young and negotiating committee chief John Bowman on the state of the informal talks, and they're concerned about recent moves circumventing the understanding that the guild would cool down its rhetoric during the informal talks.

"The worry among the moderates on the negotiating committee is that the WGA's being positioned to reject the deal," one source said. "They gave Patric and David two weeks to make a run at this, and that time is almost up."

The WGA leaders have been attempting to maintain a united front. Picketing continues at the major studios, and last week they asked members to sign a letter pledging "full support" to the leadership. "We place our full trust in you, the leadership, to disregard outside pressure and negotiate the best possible terms on behalf of every member of the WGA," it said. "A swift resolution to our strike is what we all want but securing our future is what we all need."

Talks will resume today, with News Corp. president Peter Chernin and Disney topper Robert Iger repping the congloms.

The informal talks are in their second week, with both sides continuing their no-comment policy and observing a news blackout. Neither side had any comment Thursday about the meetings -- which are serving as de facto negotiations aimed at setting the stage for the resumption of official negotiations.

With no official word, optimists have concluded that as long as both sides keep talking, they'll be heading toward a done deal. But concerns have emerged from the writers' side that the moguls were threatening to ditch the talks if the WGA won't agree to the formula for downloads included in the DGA deal. The compensation plan for Web streaming cut by the DGA is also said to be a major sticking point for the WGA.

Informed sources said the talks of the past two have not been entirely unproductive. The sides are believed to have exchanged draft proposals for contract language on some issues, but the process has not achieved much momentum toward a resolution both sides can sign off on.

Worries about another breakdown in talks between the WGA and majors have crystallized since SAG's bombshell announcement on Tuesday that expressed deep misgivings about terms of the directors' pact. SAG claimed the DGA's doubling of the download residuals formulas -- to 0.7% for TV and 0.65% in features -- was actually an AMPTP rollback since the WGA, SAG and the DGA had filed grievances over the fact that the download rate did not equal the pay TV rate of 1.2%.

The DGA told SAG to butt out and insisted it's made an impressive deal, with major gains in new media and access to company data. The AMPTP shot back at SAG a day later by saying that the guilds hadn't pursued the grievances seriously, opting to settle them at the bargaining table.

The AMPTP elaborated on Thursday, asserting that SAG had misstated the bargaining history over the download formula. It noted that in 2001, SAG agreed that the download formula would be determined at a future negotiation, and in 2006, SAG asserted that no formula yet existed.

"SAG knew all too well that the parties never seriously contemplated -- let alone actually agreed to -- applying the pay TV formula to EST (electronic sell-through)," the AMPTP added.

SAG's announcement has been widely viewed as reflecting efforts by its close allies at the WGA to press the congloms for better terms at the informal talks -- though moderate WGA members have questioned the wisdom of SAG issuing such a jarring announcement after the WGA told its members to cool down their rhetoric when informal talks started.

Other high-profile writers, including showrunners Tom Fontana and John McNamara and WGA West board member Phil Alden Robinson, have continued to publicly criticize the DGA deal.

McNamara, whose overall deal at CBS Paramount Network TV was terminated Jan. 14, said Thursday that the DGA deal is "bad."

"It may be a bad deal with a few good points, but it is not the reverse," he asserted in a letter posted on the UnitedHollywood.com blog. "Don't be swayed to think otherwise. You know what's right here. Everyone does, no matter what they say out of anger, desperation, greed or exhaustion."

The WGA also announced Thursday that it has inked two more interim deals, signing with the Film Dept. and Intermedia in the 15th and 16th such agreements unveiled in the past month. The news came a day after the guild announced a deal with Overture Films and less than a week after similar agreements were signed with Lionsgate, Marvel and RKO.

The interim deals let the companies hire writers under the terms and conditions offered by the WGA before formal negotiations with the AMPTP collapsed Dec. 7.

For the WGA, the deals are a way to gain leverage in persuading the congloms to resume formal talks. The AMPTP has characterized the deals as meaningless because the companies signing them know they will not have to abide by their terms for very long, since they'll be superseded by whatever final industrywide accords are reached.

"Companies like Intermedia and the Film Dept. recognize the importance of signing a deal that compensates writers fairly for the work they do," said Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship in a joint statement. "In turn, we've designed an agreement for the entertainment industry that takes into account the economic realities that it faces."

(Cynthia Littleton contributed to this report.)