Writers Guild Says It Will Seek Bigger Share of DVD Profits

Hollywood writers have scripted a set of demands that is providing plenty of drama nearly five months before their contract expires.

Writers Guild of America officials over the weekend sent a letter to members saying the union was looking to demand more residuals for DVD sales, cable TV and foreign airings. The union also wants its jurisdiction expanded to “reality,” or unscripted, TV shows. And it wants a boost in studio contributions to the guild health fund.

The WGA makes clear in the letter that getting a bigger share of the DVD bonanza will be a cornerstone of its bargaining position, even though studios historically have taken a hard line against sharing DVD profits.

“What is clear to everyone -- writers and employees alike -- is that we will be negotiating in an exceedingly prosperous new atmosphere. It is a prosperity we helped to create and whose benefits we deserve to share,” the guild said in a letter signed by Victoria Riskin, president of the guild’s West division, and Herb Sargent, her counterpart in the East.

Studios executives denounced the WGA’s desires as unreasonable. J. Nicholas Counter, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the studios’ chief negotiator, said the union proposal “looks like a disaster waiting to happen” and called it “the most excessive package of demands we have ever seen.”

Warned Counter, “We are assuming, and will be preparing for, the worst.”

In 2001, writers and studios were involved in tense negotiations that broke off at one point and extended beyond the contract expiration date. Although a strike was averted, the mere threat of a walkout by writers -- and actors in a subsequent set of talks -- resulted in studios’ halting production out of fear projects would be shut down, putting thousands temporarily out of work.

Writers made gains then in such areas as payments when programs air on foreign TV or the Fox network and for original programs made for HBO and other pay channels. But they failed to boost the payment formula in DVD and video.

Writers last struck in 1988 during a 22-week walkout that was estimated to cost the industry $500 million in a fight over TV residuals.

The letter represents a broad outline of contract issues on which Writers Guild members will be asked to vote before talks start sometime next year. Called a “pattern of demands,” such general proposals have in the past been easily approved by guild members.

Because they aren’t specific demands yet, Writers Guild Assistant Executive Director Cheryl Rhoden said Counter’s comments were an overstatement.

The letter to members says writers now receive less than one-sixth of 1% of the $11-billion DVD market. Aside from DVD profits, the guild says, media giants can’t cry poverty when they are enjoying strong box office for their studios, the flourishing of their cable channels such as HBO and Bravo and improved broadcast advertising.

According to the letter, the WGA also plans to make bolstering its health plan a major issue, something that has been at the heart of recent labor disputes, including the current supermarket strike and lockout in Southern and Central California.