Opinion: Don’t throw a 600-page book at a new media problem

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Nick Counter has been the President of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers since it was founded in 1982. The AMPTP is the trade association responsible for negotiating virtually all of the industry-wide guild and union contracts in Hollywood. Here, he responds to an article in The Times. If you would like to respond to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed in our Blowback forum, here are our FAQs and submission policy.

For months now, the union that represents film and television writers has made no movement at the bargaining table.

The current Writers Guild of America contract expires at midnight on Oct. 31, and it appears that the leaders of the guild are eager to take their 12,000 members out on strike. Thursday’s vote results have given them authorization to do so. Unfortunately, the guild leadership had already been talking strike well before negotiations began.

We don’t see what a strike solves. The last WGA strike in 1988 lasted five months, and current estimates are that a similar stoppage could cost the industry — and all whose livelihoods depends on it — $3 billion.

In the interest of moving negotiations forward to an agreement, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers this week withdrew its proposal to restructure the payment of residuals. This cornerstone proposal would have overhauled the antiquated system of paying additional compensation to talent prior to recovering our costs of production. It was a major issue for both sides and one that went to the core of the economics of our industry. We made this move in the interest of spurring a dialogue, which hopefully would set us on the path to an agreement instead of a collision course that could throw hundreds of thousands of people in the Hollywood community out of work.

We are in a period of extraordinary technological change. The WGA is concerned about the future and doesn’t want to get left behind; neither do we. At the same time, we don’t want to give away the store by making uninformed decisions.

The Internet is not just another distribution medium like the VCR or DVD before it. Digital media are changing every aspect of our business, from production to marketing to consumption. There are young people in garages and bedrooms all over the world creating new content in new ways, and we need to work through these challenges in order to adapt and survive as an industry.

New media remains a major topic of these talks. Unlike the WGA, and writer Howard Rodman, who opined in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, we believe it would be foolish to impose the entirety of the guild’s current 600-page contract on a field that is only now emerging. We need to be able to have the flexibility to experiment and innovate. Because new media are still in their infancy and there are many moving parts, to be able to reach a deal the parties have to be committed to some serious, in-depth dialogue, which the guild so far has not been willing to do.

It is clearly in the interests of the industry to find a sustainable economic model for the production and use of entertainment on these new platforms. That’s what this negotiation is all about.

The AMPTP is prepared to negotiate a contract that will be fair and reasonable to all parties, and we hope the WGA shares that goal.