Guild to Permit Writers to Work on TV Show, Film

Striking TV and movie writers gave a film company and CBS’s “The New Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” permission to call their writers back to work but rejected similar requests by other companies, a spokesman said Thursday.

Writers Guild of America spokesman Martin Waldman also said that despite these two exceptions, the guild’s strike, now in its sixth week, is continuing against NBC, CBS, ABC and film and TV production companies.

Meanwhile, board members of the commercial actors’ unions voted resoundingly to end a strike that virtually halted new commercial productions for more than three weeks, officials announced in Los Angeles Thursday.

Negotiators for the 9,000-member Writers Guild, the networks and the approximately 200 companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will resume negotiations Monday with a federal mediator in Los Angeles.

Gap in Talks

It will be their first bargaining session since March 10. Key issues in the dispute include residual payments for both network and syndicated programs, foreign residuals for telecast of programs and creative rights.

Guild recommendations to let writers for the Smothers Brothers’ show and Ivan Reitman Productions, which wants to make a film called “Twins,” were approved by guild members at meetings Wednesday in Los Angeles and here Thursday night.

Guild officials recommended approval because of what they called “legal considerations unique to these companies,” Waldman said, declining to elaborate.

But guild members, acting on their leaders’ recommendations, “overwhelmingly” rejected requests by other entertainment companies for “interim agreements and waivers” that would let their writers return to work, Waldman said.

He declined to say how many companies were involved. In urging rejection with what it called a “sense of the membership vote,” the guild said that it had concluded that approval of their requests would hurt the organization.

It said in a statement that to let a “small number” of members return to work while the walkout continued “could lead to divisiveness and the destruction of morale among members. . . .”

‘Starting Times’

The guild also said that it “would not be in the interest of the membership to have different contract starting times.”

The guild last struck for two weeks in 1985. Its current walkout has affected film and TV production and forced such programs as NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With David Letterman” and Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” into reruns.

Network and local news programs are not affected.

Casting ballots on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists boards voted 123 to 29 to approve a tentative 3-year contract covering employment of all commercial performers, according to SAG spokesman Mark Locher.

The vote officially suspends the strike, effective this morning, pending final ratification by the 100,000 members of SAG and AFTRA, Locher said.

The boards will mail contract terms and ballots to members next week recommending that they vote to approve the contract. The final votes are due back May 20.