Is a Writers' Strike Near? Studios Reject SAG's Request for New Talks

Two months after the Screen Actors Guild contract with the Hollywood studios and television networks expired, actors are still working under expired terms and with an eventful September coming to a close that included elections and a polling of membership support for continued negotiations, little forward progress has actually been achieved by either side.

The Hollywood talent unions usually ask for larger annual contributions from the networks and studios -- companies collectively represented by the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) -- to their pension and health care funds, as well as increases in minimum wages. Negotiations this year have been complicated by the ascendancy of the Internet as a new distribution medium for traditional content and the rise of original digital content such as webisodes, muddying the water even further.

The disagreement is simple: content companies don't want unions to cover online distribution or digital property, but the unions obviously do.

The practicality of such disagreements are far more complex, however. The new contract provisions, usually referred to collectively as "new media", are mostly about the right to cover digital content at all, and residuals, the literary equivalent of book royalties. Residuals are payments for reuse of material such as when television shows hit syndication or are sold on DVD. Directors benefit less from residuals than do actors and writers so their pattern of bargaining was somewhat different this year, without even accounting for the distinctly different personalities of each union.

The Writers Guild of America is considered militant and willing to strike at any time. The Directors Guild of American is the literal opposite of the writers, seen as too eager to please the studios and willing to take any deal it is given, and has never struck in its entire existence.

The Screen Actors Guild's 100,000+ members are perceived to sit somewhere in the middle.