USA: Hollywood writers start strike after talks collapse

Television and Radio writers turned out in New York and Los Angeles on Monday (November 5) for the first day of a strike by the Writers Guild of America after last-minute talks aimed at averting the guild's first walkout in almost two decades collapsed. "People really understand how important these issues are, how important it is for us to stand together right now for ourselves, for the other guilds and fo future generations of writers," said Deborah Blum, a member of the guild. The strike is expected to shut down many sitcoms and send popular late-night talk shows such as NBC's "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman," immediately into reruns because they rely on a stream of topical jokes. Standing with the picketers outside NBC Studios in Burbank, California, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno handed out donuts to the strikers and talked about how essential the writers are in television. "I support them. It's like your kids. Am I being funny right now? No, because I don't have anyone writing for me -- they're all standing around -- if the writers were actually writing right now I would be hilarious," he said. The members of the union's East Coast arm went on strike at the designated deadline of 12:01 a.m. EST (0501 GMT). Their West Coast counterparts followed them three hours later. The East Coast walkout led to the collapse of 10-hour-long talks in Los Angeles between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the studios. A spokesman for the AMPTP said no new talks were scheduled, and both sides are braced for a lengthy strike after labor talks that were marked by intensifying hostility over more than three months. The two sides hit an impasse primarily over demands by writers for higher fees, or "residuals," derived from the sale of movies and TV programs on DVDs and the Internet. "The main and focus of our strike is new media. That we feel like we have in the past we have not gotten the fair deal that we wanted on home video and DVD. We don't what the same thing to happen in new media," said Michael Winship, the President of the Writers Guild of America, East. The last major Hollywood strike was a Writers Guild walkout in 1988 that lasted 22 weeks, delayed the start of the fall TV season and cost the industry an estimated $500 million. A prolonged strike could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues and wages. "Well I think that there is an understanding or perception that the digital revenues is going to overtake dvd and no one knows how long that's going to take bu there's that perception that explain why the writers want to get in early on this piece of the action and studios understandably are hesitating to commit to a contract where there are still uncertainties as to how this digital space could develop," said Tuna Amobi, a media analyst for Standard & Poor's. Even though studios have stockpiled scripts in preparation for a strike, production of many sitcoms is expected to shut down this week since writers will not be able to go on set and offer last-minute rewrites. The impact on movies is seen as less immediate since the major studios already have scripts for next year's projects. Picket lines will go up at 14 major film and TV studios including Walt Disney Co. 's movie operations and ABC network, Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros., Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, CBS Corp's CBS, and News Corp.'s Fox. Union members have been told that picketing is compulsory, and to hand over unfinished work to the union to ensure that that there is no furtive writing.

ITN Source | November 8, 2007

Tags:. .unions. .topical. .jay. .impact. .coast