Deadlock: Writers' Strike Reaches the Crisis Stage

The writers' strike has escalated from a thunderstorm to a hurricane.

At the 17-week mark, it is blowing stronger than ever with no end in sight. The damage is mounting, and the mood on both sides is ominously dark.

A solution to the dispute could come from the blue. But there is no immediate sign of it.

An overwhelming majority of the 9,000-member Writers Guild of America voted last week to continue its walkout against some 200 Hollywood companies. In response, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said its negotiations with the writers were "concluded."

That means more layoffs among California's 230,000 entertainment workers and a potentially rancorous battle in the weeks ahead, as studios attempt to get TV shows working with non-union scripts.

As the strike hits the crisis level, more than a few people have asked: "Why?"

"Frankly, I sometimes think it's just a stupid contest on both sides," says the writer-producer of one major TV show, who has been a public supporter of the guild, even though he doesn't wholly agree with its specific positions.

The confusion grows partly from inflated rhetoric on both sides, and partly from the esoteric nature of Hollywood's labor disputes.

The producers' latest offer was a 48-page document, crammed with details about "break amounts," "participation rights" and "protected class access," which even the most ardent partisans on either side aren't likely to have read in full. Defending the offer as a partial victory for the guild at a recent press conference, Steven Bochco, producer-writer of "L.A. Law," was embarrassed to admit that he didn't know exactly what made it a win. He hadn't read it.

What are the problems keeping Hollywood's writers and producers apart?

Foreign Residuals

The sharpest issue separating the sides is the guild's demand for an increase in its residuals--payments for reruns--for TV shows sold abroad. Movie-related issues are largely resolved.

Specifically, the union, which already gets a fixed foreign residual, wants an additional annual payment equal to 5% of its current minimum for each year that a program is sold to broadcasters and cable operators around the world. The payment would amount to $637 a year for an hourlong show like "Miami Vice" and $330 a year for a half-hour comedy like "The Cosby Show."

Until 1991, moreover, there would be no new payments at all, since the new residual would kick in only after producers have been allowed to show programs for three years or longer (depending on the kind of program) in return for the initial fixed payment.

In mathematical terms, the stakes seem absurdly minute.

Shows like "Miami Vice" already cost $1.5 million an episode to produce. So the new residual would add an annual charge equal to 4-hundredths of 1% of a major show's cost per episode, starting in three years.

By the same token, writers already are guaranteed contractual minimum payments of $29,959 for an hourlong script and one network rerun. So a single working writer would have to earn the new residual for 47 years in order to make up his lost fee for each script he doesn't sell during the strike.

Guild leaders say writers should have the new fee, because foreign sales of TV shows have mushroomed in recent years and because tiny inroads, gained in past negotiations, later proved to be of enormous value. "You trivialize the issue to say it's just $637 an episode. That will increase as the minimums increase every year," says chief guild negotiator Brian Walton, arguing that the numbers become significant for writers when episodes begin to add up.

Company negotiators say the guild exaggerates the value of foreign sales, which typically amount to less than 10% of the money a studio ultimately receives for each TV episode produced. Further, companies say they won't pay the residual, however small, because it would only add to losses they are taking on many TV shows, and because they would almost certainly be forced to give other unions the same payments. "It's the domino theory," says J. Nicholas Counter III, chief negotiator for the alliance.

Hourlong TV Residuals