[lancer1993]

Welcome to today's installment of "As the Guild Turns."

I just wish they would get on with it and stop acting like a bunch of kids.

No one wants a strike when networks/studios are looking at cutting back on spending, we could end up with reality and game shows 24/7.

[+supernova+]

I know right?!

And they'll be dramas and reality shows about reality and game shows.

[Guinevere]

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Vampires and D.C. politicians (hopefully not in combination) are the latest additions to the CW's pilot slate for fall. The network on Thursday gave the green light to pilots "Vampire Diaries" and "Body Politics." "Vampire Diaries" is based on Alloy Entertainment's 15-year-old series of novels, which are enjoying a resurgence with their reprinting in the wake of the "Twilight Success." It centers on a tragic young heroine who is the object of passion for two vampire brothers -- one good, one evil -- who are at war for her soul and for the souls of her friends, family and other residents of the small town in which she resides. Kevin Williamson, creator of "Dawson's Creek" and the "Scream" feature franchise, wrote the script with Julie Plec ("Kyle XY). "Body Politics" looks at Washington politics through the eyes of optimistic young staffers, focusing on a young woman who moves to D.C. to work for a senator and the other eager up-and-comers with whom she becomes friends. Jason Rothenberg and Bill Robinson penned the script. "Body Politics" is the second Capitol Hill-set pilot this season, after the CBS drama "House Rules." Reuters/Hollywood Reporter .

CW puts Vampire, Politics on its pilot slate | Entertainment | Television | Reuters
I'm excited, those books are on my list to read.

[+supernova+]

Sounds interesting, but they should make Fearless into a series...the right way.

[chasing starlight]

I'm so excited about the Vampire Diaries being made into a series. I'm curious as to how they'll do it, whether they stay true to the books or whether they go down the Gossip Girl route and make their own canon.

[Matt Logan]

Due to ongoing economic issues with MyNetworkTV, parent company NewsCorp announced today that they were dropping the broadcast channel's network status and would be re-branding the outlet under the term "Hybrid Programming."


The Associated Press reported the following on the MyNetworkTV changes as well:

NEW YORK (AP) - In a sign of the economic times, My Network TV says it will essentially become a rerun network next fall except for professional wrestling.

The move shows how the tough advertising climate is affecting television. Instead of developing new programs, it will show reruns of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" and other series.

My Network TV will also stop programming on Saturday nights, leaving that night to their affiliates and owned stations.

MyNetwork, home of 'SmackDown!,' switches to new syndicated-TV strategy | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times

[+supernova+]

WGA strike: One year later Fallout still felt from writers' walkout By CYNTHIA LITTLETON One year later, the evidence is clear: The WGA strike crippled the film and TV biz at a time when the industry was already caught in the buzzsaw of a radically changing marketplace for Hollywood's wares. The strike by the Writers Guild of America that spanned Nov. 5, 2007-Feb. 12, 2008, sent the congloms on a cost-cutting binge that is as much an opportunistic drive to downsize the cost structure of production as it is a necessary effort to help offset shrinking profit margins. As the industry still grapples with the upshot of SAG's long-running contract drama, the collateral damage of the WGA walkout is coming into sharper focus. The impact has included the following: * A swift and dramatic reduction in fees paid to above-the-line talent, particularly thesps and scribes. Feature scribes, in particular, are grumbling about massive reductions in post-strike script fees. * Primetime development business that has yet to fully recover from the disruption caused to the 2007-08 TV season and development for the current season. * A de facto strike caused by uncertainty surrounding the Screen Actors Guild that has put this year's film business in a coma, even after the WGA settlement. And then the broader financial meltdown hit. Given the state of the global economy, some of the downsizing and budget-slashing that Hollywood is now enduring would have come even without the 100-day walkout. But the realignment of the biz's investment priorities is coming more swiftly and more comprehensively because of the scrutiny of operations that took place while the scribes were pounding the pavement. At the outset, the strike starved the major nets and some cablers of original scripted programming at the worst possible time for a disruption to primetime's status quo. Even top-tier shows -- think "CSI," "Grey's Anatomy," "House" and "Heroes" -- haven't recovered from the ratings hit they took after being MIA for most of the second half of last season. As any network skedding exec will tell you, when viewers break a given habit, even for just a few weeks, it's next to impossible to get them all back. Nonetheless, WGA leaders and many members remain resolute that the sacrifices of the strike were well worth it. The hard-fought contract set a template for residual formulas in new media on which the guild hopes to build in future deals. Most importantly, from the WGA's perspective, the deal prevented a repeat of the reviled homevid compensation battle of the 1980s, in which scribe residuals were based on only 20% of revenues generated by vid sales. The damage for California from the strike has been estimated at $2.1 billion in lost economic activity, according to a report issued in June by the Milken Institute; according to Jack Kyser, chief economist with the L.A. County Economic Development Corp., there was an estimated $2.5 billion in lost wages for workers in Los Angeles County alone. But the biggest impact may be the intangible cost of lost opportunities. Most painfully for the town, the strike gave the congloms the force majeure cover to make deep, immediate cuts without fear of losing competitive advantage in the creative community or appearing as if they were retrenching. In the space of a few days in mid-January 2008, NBC Universal, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and CBS Corp. wiped many millions of dollars in overall deals and other development obligations off their books. In the year that has passed, series budgets have been hacked; ABC and CBS asked for cuts of 3%-10% from all scripted series even before the worst of the financial crisis hit last year. It's understood that several established drama series on the Big Three are under pressure to cut budgets by double digits or they will not be returning even though they deliver respectable ratings. Talent reps report that for all but top-tier thesps, actor salary quotes have become a thing of the past, and there's little wiggle room for negotiation of the rates that studios offer for pilot and series deals. And reps are being warned that the industry tradition of renegotiating thesp salaries after the second or third season is going the way of the VCR and the pay telephone. Of course, the boldest example of how the world has changed for the creative community is NBC's move to devote the final hour of its primetime sked to Jay Leno's yakker at 10 p.m. as of this fall. The strike was surely not the only catalyst for all the upheaval in the creative community. But the strike came at a time when the stewards of the major congloms were under pressure to reinvent the biz's fundamentals, amid the disruptive effects of new technologies, not add to above-the-line production costs. A shared fear of uncertainty about Hollywood's once-and-future revenue sources was both the spark and the fuel for the strike. The WGA came to the bargaining table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in summer 2007 with the legitimate demand that writers be compensated for work distribbed in new media. But the guild was highly unrealistic in its assessment of the size of the market and the myriad business challenges facing the WGA's major employers. Faced with tough talk from the WGA, the AMPTP pushed back even harder with its incendiary proposal to shift all residuals to a "recoupment" formula wherein scribes would not be paid for reuse of film and TV productions in any market until a distrib had recouped its basic costs. This amounted to pouring gasoline onto the fire stoked for more than a year by the WGA leadership among members about the urgent need for scribes to establish new-media residuals or risk facing a rerun of the reviled homevideo compensation scenario. By many accounts, what largely prevented the WGA and AMPTP from cutting a deal and averting a strike was the lack of communication or relationship-building on both sides in the years leading up to the contract talks. By the time the negotiating teams met across the table, they weren't even speaking the same language. The DGA wound up serving as a very effective interpreter. In the rush of relief that followed the end of the writers strike, there was talk on both sides of the aisle about the need for a stronger partnership between the guilds and the majors at such a pivotal moment for the industry. So far, with the spectacle of SAG's epic contract drama and the WGA's accusations that the majors have not lived up to some terms of the deal, there's little evidence that diplomacy will play a bigger part when the WGA vs. AMPTP rematch comes in the contract talks of 2011.

Read the full article at:
WGA strike: One year later - Entertainment News, Labor Issues, Media - Variety

[+supernova+]

Obama Makes DTV Delay Official

[jalapeno_wildchild]

i can't believe they delayed the DTV transition.

that's what i think about it.

[+supernova+]

Yeah seriously. They should have just put it in June in the first place.

[+supernova+]

AMPTP gives SAG its 'final offer' Talks break off; guild has 60 days to respond By Jay A. Fernandez Feb 19, 2009, 08:13 PM ET Updated: Feb 20, 2009, 12:39 AM ET Related More SAG/AMPTP news SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers broke off negotiations around 8:30 p.m. Thursday on the heels of the AMPTP's delivery of a "last, best and final offer." The two parties had been meeting for the third day in a row to hammer out a resolution to a new TV-theatrical contract. The new offer is valid for 60 days, at which point the AMPTP reserves the right "to modify or withdraw the terms of the offer." The two sides have no further scheduled negotiating sessions. The AMPTP had proferred what it termed its "final offer" on June 30 but has made some changes to it that the SAG negotiating task force will now deliver to its national board Saturday for possible approval. That's hardly a sure thing at this point as partisans on both sides of the guild's internal divide may deem the "enhancements" too slight to merit sending it on to the membership for ratification. Among the changes are a withdrawal of the AMPTP's proposal on French hours and a reinstated "revised clause" that addresses force majeure protections. Minimums and pension and health rate contributions also received small bumps. (The new contract offer is posted at AMPTP - Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.) A particular sticking point is likely to be the provision that deems the new three-year contract active from the moment of ratification and not from the retroactive date of the previous contract's expiration, June 30, 2008. If ratified, the new contract would not begin until March or April (as it takes the union at least a month to ratify), pushing back the expiration of the new contract to spring 2012. Because the WGA and DGA agreements expire in spring 2011, the timing would not allow SAG to band together with its sister unions for a stronger bargaining position during the next contract go-round. The AMPTP included a clause that states that if SAG and AFTRA ratify a new contract by June 30, 2011, then the 2009 contract would end then and the new one would begin. The AMPTP released a statement Thursday night that read, in part: "The AMPTP made these enhancements in an effort to conclude the AMPTP's sixth major labor agreement in the past year. The terms in the offer are the best we can or will offer in light of the five other major industry labor deals negotiated over the past year and the extraordinary economic crisis gripping the world economy." SAG representatives have had no comment.

Find this article at:
AMPTP gives SAG its 'final offer'

[kassandrajones]

Yikes. They pulled out the economy card.

[+supernova+]

They've been doing that.

[jalapeno_wildchild]

since its near the end of shooting for some t.v. shows, i wonder if they're going to let them finish up? i heard Ellen Pompeo say they're wrapping up season 5 of Grey's Anatomy.

thanks Susan

[lancer1993]

I say Ellen on Letterman and she said they have about 6 eps to go, so that's almost 2 months.

So I don't get it (maybe I'm slow) but does it mean they are saying this is the best you'll get in these economic times and giving the Actors less?