Strike Not Over Just Yet

The espresso is brewing and the laptops are heating up, but not everyone is click-clacking away just yet.

After announcing they had struck a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Writers Guild of America leaders informed members during a briefing Saturday night that they will have 48 hours to vote on the new terms once the board has ratified the contract.

WGA officials will meet Sunday to officially endorse the agreement, and then, pending approval from the majority of the guild, the strike that began Nov. 5 and took down the Golden Globes—and perhaps a little bit of Hollywood's soul—will be formally, and finally, over.

The ins and outs of the proposed three-year deal were presented to hundreds of the WGA's East Coast members early Saturday evening at New York's Crowne Plaza hotel, and about 3,000 others were briefed at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles a few hours later, with Hollywood's response considered to be the real litmus test in gauging how close the light at the end of the tunnel really is.

There was no vote during the two-and-a-half-hour NYC session, which was described as largely informational, but it wasn't until the West Coast meeting that WGA leaders revealed their decision to hold off on officially lifting the strike until the membership vote.

"I am personally recommending that we ratify this deal," WGA West president Patric Verrone told the crowd at the Shrine. "It is the best deal the guild has bargained for in 30 years. Admittedly, the contract has some holes...The decision to lift the strike will be yours."

The board doesn't necessarily have to wait for the members to weigh in, but after all this time many were uneasy about pulling the plug on the strike without hearing from the 10,000 people who have been walking the picket lines, working on their novels, taking on odd jobs and otherwise not attending to business as usual.

Although this means scribes won't technically be back to work on Monday, plenty of people at the Shrine said they will be "unofficially" getting scripts and proposals ready for Take Ourselves to Work Day, which will likely be midweek.

"This is a historic moment for writers in this country," filmmaker Michael Moore told Daily Variety after the New York meeting. "There is a certain irony about the achievement. I would have thought it'd be autoworkers or ironworkers getting this victory, but instead it's the people who got beat up in school for writing in their journals."

"I think the meeting went very well," WGA East president Michael Winship told reporters at an impromptu press conference outside the hotel. "There was a frank discussion of ideas, and everyone who wanted to ask a question got to ask a question."

After meeting with 300 strike captains Friday afternoon to appraise them of the deal, and then continuing to negotiate until 2 a.m., Winship and Verrone sent an email to members early this morning informing them a deal had been made with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that "protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery.

"It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that ‘When they get paid, we get paid.' "

"We believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike," they wrote, noting that it's high time to put an end to the Industry-debilitating work stoppage, whether or not they think the new three-year deal is one for the ages. 

"Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success."

The immediate winner, presuming the majority of the writers say yea, will be the 80th Annual Academy Awards, which will likely be free to roll out the red carpet for writer-supporting SAG members on Feb. 24 without the threat of star-deterring picket lines.

Other beneficiaries include fans of union-approved gags on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien's Late Night, Jon Stewart's Daily Show, Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report and Jimmy Kimmel Live. All of those had gone on without their regular staffs since shortly after the new year.

As Stewart reminded his audience Thursday night as he searched for the proper retort to a Mitt Romney snafu, "It's just me up here."

It was unclear how much of this TV season will or can be salvaged, but there's hope that the networks can get a hefty portion of their prime-time lineups back on track for spring. Most scripted series normally don't wrap production until around March, so some time presumably would remain to get cranking and resume shooting.

As for the terms that finally set pens a-scribblin' and hands a-shakin' this week, much of the proposed contract mirrors what the Directors Guild of America and the alliance were able to come up with several weeks ago—an agreement that highlighted new-media jurisdiction and increased compensation for downloads and content streamed online.

The WGA's deal would also give the writers jurisdiction over material produced expressly for new-media channnels whose budgets either topped $15,000 per minute, $300,000 per program or $500,000 per series.

Like directors, writers will receive a $1,200 flat fee for the first year that content (one-hour shows) is streamed online, as well as a percentage of distributors' revenue. Residuals for downloads will effectively double.

As an added feather in the writers' caps, in the third year of their contract they will be entitled to residuals equal to 2 percent of distributors' revenue. The WGA had been pushing for a variable residual that would compensate for growth in Internet usage over the next few years.

They will also receive what's being referred to as a separated-rights provision, meaning additional compensation for Web shows that backpedal onto TV, like Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz's serial MySpace drama Quarterlife, which has been picked up by NBC.

A sticking point among WGA members, however, could be the "promotional window" that cuts into their residuals from ad-supported content streamed online. For the first 17 days that episodes are available, and 24 days for freshman series, no residuals will be paid.

Just in case, there's still a picketing event scheduled for Wednesday in front of Viacom Inc.'s New York headquarters. Should the strike end, the WGA East will promptly cancel.

(Originally published Feb. 9, 2008 at 11:32 a.m. PT)