This really could be "it"....
From Verrone and Winship, in the latest official WGA email to members:
As Negotiating Committee Chair John Bowman wrote you last night, we are continuing to negotiate the terms of a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. We anticipate that we will be able to present the terms of that agreement to you in the next few days.
While the Los Angeles meeting will be at 7:00pm on Saturday, the New York Meeting will be at 2:00pm local time. Which means we will likely have word about the terms of the deal by noon on the West Coast.
It has been reported that, as part of the negotiations, the WGA will call off the Strike when the NegCom agrees in principal with the deal, as opposed to after an official Membership vote.
This means that, if things go well, Friday may be the last day of the Strike. Cross your fingers, but don't count your chickens...
I have heard from several sources that production for most shows in the 2007-08 season will resume within a couple weeks of the Strike's end. I've heard most shows will be looking to do anywhere from 5-8 episodes to finish out a truncated season. It is likely, however, that some shows will not return this year.
For shows that do return, it is likley that SitComs will start shooting about 2 weeks after the end of the Strike and Dramas will take a week longer to start shooting. Each show is unique, however, and some will take longer to get back up to speed.
Best of luck to everyone, and may cooler heads prevail.
14 comments:
I wonder how many will show up at the Shrine Auditorium. It seats over 6000 people. I guess this means that they don't have to have a rank & file ratification like other Unions do. Lets hope that the negcomm has a deal that will win them over - I believe they do.
Not ready to crack the champaign just yet but I may order the ice...
Cheers - TranspoBill BTL 399
Please, please, please
The day this ends I am back on a known income. It will be slow at first and I have to cross fingers to hope my shows' back nine continue..... in any case, this has to stop. A strike is the last resort - war - and I really didn't want to be drafted as I was in this way for this cause. Screw you AMPTP and thanks alot (sarcasm) WGA.
Unbelievable! So I'm just milling about various sites regarding the strike, reading all the comments. Do these hardliners have nothing better to do then just go to every one of these sites, spewing their hate-filled poison in every comments section? All said yesterday: "We have them [AMPTP] right where we want them! Do not cave in yet! Stay strong, stay in the line!"....or "We must hold strong until our brothers and sisters [SAG] can join us in June!".....or "Our deal needs to be better than what the DGA shills regard as fair.".......really?
Seriously?! For the love of God! These guys are just embarrassing all you other writers. When you meet this weekend, please think of all the lives you have impacted when you decided to go to your 'last resort' first against the AMPTP, and dragged the lot of us into your war.
The moderate majority of the WGA membership is likely to approve the new deal as a way to save face for their guild and get everyone back to work. The health care disaster is one of the big things pushing them to do this - and the leadershp certainly doesn't want that situation to get any worse than it already is.
As for the hardliners, many of them will likely vote against ratification, as they're too angry and too polarized to accept anything less than total surrender by the AMPTP. These are people who really thought they could "win" a strike rather than get a better compromise on their contract. I believe this vocal minority will be counted, but wind up being unable to sway the vote their way.
I find it interesting that Nikki Finke has advocated for the strike to continue until after all the votes for ratification are counted. This is in spite of the majority of the writers and the rest of the town wanting to get back to work as soon as possible. With her way, the strike gets extended an additional month while the ballots are collected and counted. And that of course gives people like Nikki Finke another month to pontificate and stay in the public eye. It would actually be preferable for Finke to see the strike continue into a possible SAG strike, thus providing her with months of additional grist for attacks on the moguls and caustic thoughts about everyone else.
Sure a lot quieter over there on UH and DHD. Looks like most of the screamers have settled down. Even the latest picket call is billed: "show up at what could be the final mass picket of the strike".
Almost like a victory dance! Could it really be true? Some of my BTL buddies are getting ready for a huge "strike over" party.....
Waiting till the weekend news.
TranspoBill BTL 399
"Verrone, Young and Bowman may be about to experience the perpetual reality of revolutionary leaders everywhere…that the same mob that cheered you when you led them to the barricades will be the mob calling for you heads months later when you tell it what it doesn’t want to hear"
I truly hope that doesn't happen. The chances of those guys ever becoming working writers in this town is nil.
I'm starting to think that the 300 or the 30 that keeps getting thrown around are the hardliners. wouldn't that be a kick in the ass.
I posted this earlier at UH. what do you guys think
Yeah Just A Thought, I think if you do the math on 100 coments on a post you will find about 20 individual actually posting. The most hardline post the most while the opposite or differing opinion posts less either because they get sick of the name calling, or they get "moderated". So by my calculations there really are only four or five "hardliner" WGA members not factoring in the non WGA troll who posts to get a rise.
heh heh.....
Hey Bill, let me know where the party will be, I need some cheering up.
I have no job to go back to, my show is canceled.
Well IF the WGA can come to a decision on Saturday, I would imagine the party will all over town. Sorry about your show, I don't have one to go back to yet either but at least the odds of finding work will improve if they stop the strike. Still lots of featue productions in the pipeline ready to start. TV production will be a crapshoot for a while I think.
Best of luck to all!
TranspoBill BTL 399
Some TV shows will not be coming back until the summer (assuming that SAG doesn't go out). I have friends on two different shows who are realizing that while their jobs will return, it won't be for another five months. Some shows won't come back at all, but it's pretty clear which ones those are. (Bionic Woman, anyone?) And a good number of TV shows will come right back up.
I spoke with the line producer of my show last week, and the tone of the conversation was that we would come back up and then work straight through the rest of the year. Assuming that the meetings this Saturday don't result in open warfare inside the WGA, the staff writers of many TV shows will be back in the office on Monday. Somewhere around 2 weeks after that, the BTL folk will start coming back onboard, and within 2 weeks of that point, we'll be shooting again.
Of course, Nikki Finke is still trying to fan the flames. Her argument for extending the strike until the ratification vote comes back in has now led to her printed LA WEEKLY article - with the headline calling the WGA deal "crappy" and breathlessly throwing in the line "Don't Be Surprised if the Writers Revolt". Finke seems to be trying to encourage the hardliners to vote the deal down, and seems to be giving them cover if they do. It's obvious what she has to gain if they stop the deal, and it's equally obvious how she intends to spin the story if they don't. (She'll blame the WGA leadership for "caving", and make more nasty comments about the moguls and their greed, while pretending to support the rank and file writers.)
Again, I really hope people remember Finke's behavior for a long time. When the history of this strike is eventually written by someone other than her, it will have to show how much of a destructive influence she has been. I find it appropriate that the publicists want to give her a "press" award, and even more appropriate that apparently no studio wants to have her at their table at that event.
When this is over NF will go back to being a nameless blogger.
Come Monday those writers will be stabbing each other in the back for the few staff that are there.
This strike did more damage to the guild than anything thing the AMPTP did.
The end game to is like the ending of Clockwork Orange. Forced to watch and be disgusted by it.
I'm thinking of going down to the Shrine Auditorium on Saturday, if nothing more than to glare. I already have been called a "shill" for posting a remark about the WGA trying to pass themselves off as "blue collar". As you all know, BTL's are the blue collars of this industry. What's the worse injury a writer can get? Blisters on their finger tips?
A brilliant read...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/media/08strike.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
"Some committee members began asking if Mr. Young, a longtime blue-collar labor organizer who had never settled a major entertainment contract, should be ousted from his leadership role. At the same time, they privately urged growing dissident groups within the guild to sit tight."
Not sure that Mr Young has ever settled a major contract of any kind, let alone entertainment.
Cieply's NY Times article makes a lot of things clear about what has been happening over the past two weeks.
Essentially, David Young and Patric Verrone were nudged back and John Bowman wound up playing "good cop" along with one of the UH organizers. Had this been left to Verrone and Young, we would likely have seen another collapse in the talks and the strike going all the way to July. And the article makes very clear that this was very nearly the case.
As an AD friend commented to me, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that meeting at the Shrine. It's expected to be a long meeting, with the hardliners and the moderates competing for mike time and applause. If the hardliners succeed in turning the WGA leadership against the deal, the strike will surely go on for several more months. But I seriously doubt that this will happen. Michael Eisner's statements aside, it will be very difficult for the WGA leadership to walk away from this offer, no matter how loud the screams are from the hardline minority.
And Nikki Finke's clearly set herself to condemn both the deal and the WGA leadership if she doesn't get her wish for the strike to continue. Some posters on her site are starting to ask her why she's trying to incite people to reject the offer.
I also have to ask how many of the hardliners really do have a career at stake in this contract. Some clearly do, and have made large sacrifices during the strike. But for example, Mark Evanier proudly notes his many other writing endeavors and his career writing books and comic books, while at the same time rejecting the potential deal because he doesn't think it's good enough. And many of the other hardliners seem to be coming from the position that they're secure to stay on strike since they don't make their living from this business anyway.
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