The AMPTP's "Fact Sheet" -- or, six not-so-easy pieces

Talks between striking writers and the majors have collapsed with no indication of when -- or whether -- they'll resume.

The AMPTP issued a statement early Friday evening announcing that talks had broken off, listing a half-dozen areas in which it will not make a deal with the WGA. 

The move came at the end of a day of dueling news releases, which saw each side blame the other for the lack of progress at the negotiating table. As of 7 p.m. PST, the WGA had not responded officially to the announcement.

The AMPTP has laid out six areas of disagreement in a "fact sheet" distributed along with its press release. That means for negotiations to resume, the WGA would have to back off on issues related to all of those areas before negotiations can resume. 

The "AMPTP Fact Sheet," after the jump.   

Jurisdictional Issues

The WGA’s organizers had made clear prior to the resumption of negotiations that jurisdictional issues in the areas of reality television and animation would no longer be central issues. Despite this commitment, the WGA placed all of these jurisdictional issues back on the table. This is unacceptable because the WGA is trying to achieve through these negotiations what the WGA has failed to achieve through traditional labor organizing techniques.

Internet Compensation

The WGA proposed a system of compensation for Internet programming that, when applied to the WGA and the other guilds, could result in producers paying more to the guilds from Internet programming than the producers actually receive in revenue from such Internet programming. The WGA’s proposal could create a completely untenable business model for the rapidly changing Internet marketplace.

Access to Revenue Streams Unrelated to Producers

The WGA has proposed for the first time in the history of entertainment industry negotiations that writers receive access to overall advertising revenues. The WGA’s proposal would mean that producers would be paying residuals on advertising revenue that the producers themselves never ever receive.  This unprecedented demand by the WGA is completely unreasonable.

Establishing Fair Market Value Outside the Marketplace

The WGA has proposed using third parties to determine the value of a transaction instead of the marketplace determining that transaction’s value. The WGA’s proposal would allow an arbitrator to attach a greater value to a transaction than the marketplace actually attached to it. As a result, under the WGA’s proposal, producers would have to pay residuals on money that the producers never even received in the first place.

Reality Television

The WGA wants to assert WGA jurisdiction over reality television in an underhanded and legally dubious fashion. The WGA’s proposal would prohibit broadcasters -- who are not even parties to these negotiations – from doing business with independent reality producers unless those producers have agreed to be bound to the WGA agreement. The WGA’s anti-competitive proposal would expand WGA coverage over reality TV writers who the WGA has failed to organize legitimately.

Sympathy Strikes

The WGA organizers are demanding the right to ignore their bargained “no strike” provision, allowing them to join in strikes of other labor organizations.