AMPTP Makes New Proposal

But the WGA doesn't seem overly enthralled with it:

"Thursday morning, the first new proposal was finally presented to us," the guild [said]. "For streaming television episodes, the companies proposed a residual structure of a single fixed payment of less than $250 for a year's reuse of an hourlong program (compared to over $20,000 payable for a network rerun). For theatrical product, they are offering no residuals whatsoever for streaming. For made-for-Internet material, they offered minimums that would allow a studio to produce up to a 15-minute episode of network-derived Web content for a script fee of $1,300. They continued to refuse to grant jurisdiction over original content for the Internet." ...

The LA TIMES doesn't think that the parties are close to an agreement, judging by the headline of Richard Verrier's and Claudia Eller's article: Secret is Out: Gap Still Big In Bargaining

... Writers view online entertainment as a new frontier and don't want to be shortchanged. Studios, however, say they can't compete in the new medium if they must pay union wages.

Furthermore, the guild said, the studios did not budge from their previous offer to apply an unpopular DVD formula to movies and TV shows that are sold online. Nor did the studios scrap an equally controversial proposal that allows them to stream entire films and TV episodes for promotional purposes without paying residuals ...

So it looks, despite the hooplah about "a new proposal" that there's a bunch of negotiating still to do. And the strike could go on awhile.

A couple of industry folks have mentioned that when the strike is six weeks old, the studios can exercise their "force majeur" clauses and start voiding personal service agreements they find too expensive. If that's true for a majority of PSCs, then the cynic in me says, the strike's gonna last at least six weeks...