Writers Guild Seeks Further Individual Deals with Studios

LOS ANGELES, January 2: The Writers Guild of America (WGA)
is maintaining its efforts to strike new contracts with individual production
houses, after confirming an agreement with Worldwide Pants last week that
allows the writing staff on The Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson to get back to work.

Announcing the deal, Patric M. Verrone, the president of
WGAW, and Michael Winship, the president of WGAE, noted: “This agreement is a
positive step forward in our effort to reach an industry-wide contract. While
we know that these deals put only a small number of writers back to work, three
strategic imperatives have led us to conclude that this deal, and similar
potential deals, are beneficial to our overall negotiating efforts.”

First, the WGA heads state that the Alliance of Motion
Picture of Television Producers (AMPTP) “has not yet been a productive avenue
for an agreement. As a result, we are seeking deals with individual
signatories. The Worldwide Pants deal is the first. We hope it will encourage
other companies, especially large employers, to seek and reach agreements with
us. Companies who have a WGA deal and Guild writers will have a clear
advantage. Companies that do not will increasingly find themselves at a
competitive disadvantage. Indeed, such a disadvantage could cost competing
networks tens of millions in refunds to advertisers.”

The WGA also notes that Worldwide Pants has signed on for a
“full and binding agreement” that includes “the new media proposals we have
been unable to make progress on at the big bargaining table. This demonstrates
the integrity and affordability of our proposals. There are no shortcuts in
this deal. Worldwide Pants has accepted the very same proposals that the Guild
was prepared to present to the media conglomerates when they walked out of
negotiations on December 7.”

Letterman and Ferguson will have a distinct advantage over
other late-night talk shows returning this week—Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel,
Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart, among others, will be back on the air without
their writing staff. The WGA says that its “strike pressure will be intense and
essential in directing political and SAG-member guests to Letterman and
Ferguson rather than to struck talk shows. At this time, picket lines at venues
such as NBC (both Burbank and Rockefeller Center), The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and the Golden Globes are essential. Outreach to
advertisers and investors will intensify in the days ahead and writers will
continue to develop new media content itself to advance our position. We must
continue to push on all fronts to remind the conglomerates each and every day
that we are committed to a fair deal for writers and the industry.”

The WGA has said that the AMPTP has “walked away from the
table and refuses to negotiate.” The AMPTP, meanwhile, alleges that “the people
in charge at the WGA have led working writers into a strike that has now cost
those working writers more in salary and benefits than the WGA’s organizers
ever expected to gain from the strike. And the strike continues because the
union’s leaders are focused on jurisdictional issues that would expand their
own power, at the expense of the new media issues that working writers care
most about.”

According to the AMPTP, the strike has thus far cost writers
more than $165 million.

—By Mansha Daswani