Oh my god. SAG wants more than Directors and Writers? That's a smart tactic I guess. When are people going to understand, most importantly actors - we are at war -- we are facing a major recession -- our country is in dire need of being fixed - our country also has no money because we have given trillions to the Iraq war and we have NOT even started to pay for it -- it is just paid right now by printing more money on presses -- China owns our ass in every way. Why not strike on a business in a down fall. Just like the writer's they made pennies on the four extra months striking -- when you do the real math and they are paying the price for it still -- so many writer's (sic) out of work still!!! I want this business to thrive -- I know the studio heads and they will punish those that defy them. Okay, be an idealist -- but you will never get a better deal then the writer's (sic) or directors -- only the same -- the studio's (sic) will never allow it, don't kid yourself. The working actors don't want a strike - they have said so. Too many non working actors have a say which is crazy -- maybe there are just too many actors?? Gosh I'm even a member of SAG, but I don't feel I've earned the right to vote in this guild.

One hunch, the leaders of these guilds seem to like the limelight they get in the press, it becomes more about the ego in the room rather than something smart. Striking is not smart. Through the history in America, strikes in businesses have only gained the union worker 6% at the max -- so take the emotion out of it and go for the 6%. A path to strike is not smart for the the hundreds of thousands of people in this business. Sanity needs to prevail here -- talk real and talk the same talk as your union brothers -- not more!

The AMPTP was quick to weigh in Wednesday with a statement praising DGA members for ratifying "the sensible labor agreement." The statement also seemed to cast an eye toward the near future, as the AMPTP still faces what are likely to be contentious contract talks with the Screen Actors Guild.

Our negotiations with DGA proved beyond any doubt that when both parties are prepared to bargain seriously, groundbreaking new media labor pacts can be reached without resorting to harmful and unnecessary strikes," the AMPTP said.

The figure includes wages lost by writers and other entertainment industry workers when the strike shut down production, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

His Tuesday estimate also represents damage done to Hollywood-dependent businesses such as limousine services and caterers in the area.

The Writers Guild of America strike began Nov. 5 and ended Feb. 12, after union members reviewed a tentative contract deal and voted to return to work.

Writing can resume immediately. If you were employed when the strike began, you should plan to report to work on Wednesday. If you're not employed at an office or other work site, call or e-mail your employer that you are resuming work. If you have been told not to report to work or resume your services, we recommend that you still notify your employer in writing of your availability to do so. Questions concerning return-to-work issues should be directed to the WGAW legal department at 323.782.4521 or the WGAE's assistant executive director Ann Toback at 212-767-7823.

The decision to begin this strike was not taken lightly and was only made after no other reasonable alternative was possible. We are profoundly aware of the economic loss these fourteen weeks have created not only for our members but so many other colleagues who work in the television and motion picture industries. Nonetheless, with the establishment of the WGA jurisdiction over new media and residual formulas based on distributor's gross revenue (among other gains) we are confident that the results are a significant achievement not only for ourselves but the entire creative community, now and in the future.

We hope to build upon the extraordinary energy, ingenuity, and solidarity that were generated by your hard work during the strike.

Moving one step closer to ending the 4-month-old strike, the board of the Writers Guild of America unanimously blessed this morning the tentative accord reached last week with the studios.

The endorsement paves the way for writers to return to work on Wednesday, pending a vote by the guild's membership to lift the strike order on Tuesday. The guild's 10,500 movie and TV writers covered by this contract are expected to ratify the new three-year agreement within 10 days.

Hollywood's top show runners, however, can return to work Monday in their capacity as producers, which includes hiring crews and getting their series ready to shoot. The strike shut down more than 60 shows and idled thousands of production workers who are anxious to return to their jobs.

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Many had expected the strike to end Monday. But at a well-attended membership meeting at the Shrine Auditorium on Saturday night, Patric Verrone, president of WGA, West, told 3,500 writers that the board would not lift the strike without letting them vote on it Tuesday.

The strike, which began Nov. 5, remains in effect until the governing boards of the two writers' guilds gauge the sense of their membership this weekend and decide whether to end the walkout. The boards are expected to meet as early as Sunday, and the strike could be over by Monday morning.

A memorandum sent to some writers guild members summarized a four-hour meeting on Friday in which union leaders briefed a group of 300 strike captains. According to the memorandum, the guild boards and negotiating committee are expected to recommend the tentative deal unanimously, but they are withholding action to end the walkout until after Saturday’s scheduled meetings.

In their e-mail message, Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast guild, and Michael Winship, his East Coast counterpart, said: "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."

While approval appears likely, members have warily debated the expected agreement all week, and they are certain to scrutinize the details closely at the Saturday meetings. A guild spokesman on Saturday morning declined to confirm plans for Sunday board meetings.

3:30 PM: Immediately after meeting with the strike captains, Dave Young and other WGA negotiators went back to continue working on a draft of the deal language. Said one WGA strike captain, "We were told that the other side's lawyers just keep chipping away and making changes in order to gain a few crumbs more favorable. This is a dangerous game they're playing. It's Russian roulette."

2:15 PM: I'm told the WGA leadership spent from 10 AM to 2:15 PM today briefing strike captains point by point about the deal. I'm told among the bad news is that the negotiated writer-mogul terms still call for that 17-day window for ad-embedded TV show streaming. But one prominent strike captain describes the good news to me like this: "This is a decent deal if the distributors gross turns out to be a real number. There are some protections in there, and some good points, that I didn't expect them to be able to negotiate. On Saturday, I'll be speaking in favor of the deal. Writers need to let go of some dreams. It's not a resounding and humiliating defeat of the companies. But it also doesn't let the networks and studios treat the Internet like the Wild Wild West."

Here's the magazine's statement: "After much consideration, and in support of the writers and everyone else affected by this strike, we have decided that this is not the appropriate year to hold our annual Oscar party. We want to congratulate all of this year's nominees and we look forward to hosting our 15th Oscar party next year." This year's fete was supposed to be held at Craft.

Hollywood's striking writers and major studios have reached the outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet, people familiar with the negotiations said Saturday. A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America board as early as Friday, according to three people close to the talks who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.

The tentative deal came after two weeks of talks that culminated in a marathon bargaining session Friday that was attended by News Corp. President Peter Chernin, Walt Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger and Writers Guild of America negotiators David Young, Patrick M. Verrone and John F. Bowman. Progress had been made in previous meetings on payment for work sold online, but Friday's session saw a breakthrough on the most contentious issue: compensation for the free streaming of films and TV programs over the Internet.

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Attorneys from the studios and the guild were meeting over the weekend to discuss contract language for the proposed agreement, which would need to be ratified by the union's 10,500 members. Even before a vote by members, the strike would probably be called off if board members strongly endorse the deal.

There are some issues that have yet to be resolved, including defining what qualifies as promotion on the Internet. The debate centers on the extent to which networks can run video clips and other materials on their websites to promote TV programs before paying writers.

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Writers made some important concessions of their own earlier when they dropped demands to unionize work on animated movies and reality TV shows -- both of which had been viewed as non-starters by the studios. The agreement was negotiated on the studio side by Chernin and Iger, who had been designated by the heads of the other studios to negotiate on their behalf.

A new survey from Carat, a media communications company, found that the Hollywood writers' strike is not driving viewers away from TV but is affecting their viewing patterns, with 72 percent of respondents watching the same amount of prime-time TV than before the strike, 25 percent of people watching less and 3 percent watching more.

The survey also discovered that in addition to their typical television viewing, consumers are changing what they watch during prime time. For example, they are willing to watch different genres, watch repeat episodes and channel surf to hunt for different programs. Sixteen percent of respondents said they would continue to watch their favorite TV shows in repeats for the next three to six months and among those viewers, 21 percent said they would never lose interest. For those viewers who said they "would not" or "may not" continue to watch their favorite shows in repeats, the top choice was to go online (54 percent), followed by channel surfing until they found something else interesting to watch (51 percent). Additionally, viewers who are not willing to continue watching repeats of their favorite shows are also open to expanding their use of other entertainment options such as online (54 percent), DVDs (80 percent), magazines (30 percent) and video games (20 percent).

Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood's writers and production companies eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, opening the prospect of a tentative agreement between the parties as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

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The agreement may come without renewed formal negotiations between the parties, though both sides still need to agree on specific language of key provisions. If that process goes smoothly, an agreement may be presented to the governing boards of the striking Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East by the end of next week, the people said.

The breakthrough occurred Friday after two weeks of closed-door discussions between the sides. Even if approved by leaders of the guilds, a deal would require ratification by a majority of the more than 10,000 active guild members.

*****

A final sticking point had been compensation for television programs that are streamed over the Internet after their initial broadcast. Companies were seeking a period during which they could stream such shows without paying a residual, and wanted to peg payments for a year of streaming at the $1,200 level established in the directors' contract. Writers were seeking 1.2 percent of the distributors' revenue from such streams as a residual. How that issue was finally resolved in the informal talks remained unclear as of Saturday afternoon.

And what about the resigned middle view, that this strike is just a harbinger of more labor battles? "There is something deep and profound going on in the country as a whole. There's a major change in technology that's ongoing, and we're adapting to it in a business negotiation," says writer-director David Koepp (Spider-Man, Jurassic Park), who's editing his new film Ghost Town when he's not picketing. Summarizing the major debate between the studios and the writers, Koepp says, "There is a philosophical disagreement over the ownership of the Internet. No one fully understands what the impact of the technology will be. Rather than one big seismic negotiation, there is going to be a series of negotiations over the next 10 years as the technology shakes out. The rhetoric on both sides can get rather hysterical because people don't understand what the parameters" of the new business model are.

These are the times when the masses need their opiates. Oops. Only 1,000 hours of Law & Order reruns are available. What about 300-pound dancing-singing celebrities trying to kill each other on a desert island? At least politics has come to the audience's rescue, providing the best soap opera/reality show on the airwaves. Who knows, maybe the populace is turning out in droves because the election is becoming the best show in town, and interactive to boot.

n a signal that informal talks to end the writers strike may be gaining momentum, the WGA has offered an olive branch to the congloms by abruptly canceling a Wall Street confab for CBS' institutional investors. The guild -- now in its 87th day of striking -- pulled the plug Wednesday without explanation on what would have been a presentation aimed at persuading investors to put pressure on CBS honcho Leslie Moonves to make a deal with the WGA.

Next Tuesday's event at the Cornell Club in Gotham would have also been designed to persuade research analysts to lower their investment ratings on CBS stock. The get-together was billed as an hourlong event to present the WGA's analysis of the strike's impact on the congloms generally and CBS specifically, featuring speeches by WGA West president Patric Verrone, WGA East prexy Michael Winship, SAG president Alan Rosenberg and writers and actors from CBS programs.

Neither side had any comment Wednesday about the confab or the informal talks, which have entered their second week under a news blackout with the goal of setting the stage for the resumption of official negotiations.

But the WGA's move to deep-six an event that could have angered the congloms will likely be interpreted by the town as a sign that the talks -- despite their slow pace -- are yielding some progress. WGA West exec director David Young noted in the invitation, sent out Sunday to research analysts, that most analysts view CBS as being "especially vulnerable" to the strike because of its concentration in network TV.