Writers’ Strike: How Did We Get Here?
So let’s start this at the beginning. How did we get here?
Sunday night, at the urging of a federal mediator, representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America spent 10 hours at a hotel in Hollywood trying to reach a deal.
Then, at around 9:15 p .m. PT, the AMPTP negotiators, while surfing the Internet, discovered that the East Coast writers had begun the strike at 12:01 a.m. ET. AMPTP President Nick Counter asked his WGA counterpart, David Young, if he was willing “to stop the clock” and delay the strike so negotiations could continue. Young said no. They were willing to negotiate, but they would not postpone the strike.
The AMPTP felt further negotiation was futile, so the meeting ended.
Just seven hours earlier, writers took their DVD demands off the table when it appeared negotiations had made some headway. But now it’s a war of they said-they said as the AMPTP argues that they had made significant enough concessions to postpone the strike, while the WGA argues that there had not been enough progress to stop the strike.
And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the two groups will be back to the table anytime soon. Counter said yesterday that no negotiations were possible as long as strikers were on the streets. Young said the guild would return to negotiations only if the studios were ready to “seriously respond” to the WGA proposals…
Sunday night, at the urging of a federal mediator, representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America spent 10 hours at a hotel in Hollywood trying to reach a deal.
Then, at around 9:15 p .m. PT, the AMPTP negotiators, while surfing the Internet, discovered that the East Coast writers had begun the strike at 12:01 a.m. ET. AMPTP President Nick Counter asked his WGA counterpart, David Young, if he was willing “to stop the clock” and delay the strike so negotiations could continue. Young said no. They were willing to negotiate, but they would not postpone the strike.
The AMPTP felt further negotiation was futile, so the meeting ended.
Just seven hours earlier, writers took their DVD demands off the table when it appeared negotiations had made some headway. But now it’s a war of they said-they said as the AMPTP argues that they had made significant enough concessions to postpone the strike, while the WGA argues that there had not been enough progress to stop the strike.
And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the two groups will be back to the table anytime soon. Counter said yesterday that no negotiations were possible as long as strikers were on the streets. Young said the guild would return to negotiations only if the studios were ready to “seriously respond” to the WGA proposals…
Info courtesy of "The Los Angeles Times" and "TV Week"
