Share of DVD, ’Net profits is writers’ focus in talks

Plans are to picket every major studio in Hollywood and Rockefeller Center in New York.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood writers were back at the bargaining table Sunday in a last-minute push to avoid a strike against TV networks and movie studios over writers’ share of profits from DVDs and the Internet.

The battle has broad implications for the way Hollywood does business, since whatever deal is struck by the Writers Guild of America will likely be used as a template for talks with actors and directors, whose contracts expire next June.

“We’ll get what they get,” Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg told The Associated Press.

Negotiators were meeting with a federal mediator Sunday evening in hopes of avoiding a strike that writers had set to begin 12:01 a.m. today.

The guild announced sweeping plans to picket every major studio in Los Angeles starting at 9 a.m. today, along with Rockefeller Center in New York, where NBC is headquartered.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers previously called a writers’ strike “precipitous and irresponsible.”

Producers believe progress can be made on other issues but “it makes absolutely no sense to increase the burden of this additional compensation,” said J. Nicholas Counter, the producers’ chief negotiator.

The guilds have been preparing for these negotiations for years, hiring staff with extensive labor union experience, and developing joint strategies and a harder line than producers have seen in decades.

The writers are the first union to bargain for a new deal this year. Their contract expired Wednesday.

In past years, actors have almost always gone first, although the Directors Guild of America, which is seen as the least aggressive of the three guilds, has sometimes taken the lead. Whatever deal was struck first was usually accepted by the others.

The guilds are aware that if writers fail to win concessions involving DVDs and the Internet, actors may have to take up the fight.

“This is an issue that touches every member of this guild and every member of the Screen Actors Guild as well,” said Carlton Cuse, executive producer of the ABC drama “Lost.”

Consumers are expected to spend $16.4 billion on DVDs this year, according to Adams Media Research. By contrast, studios could generate only $158 million from selling movies online and about $194 million from selling TV shows over the Web, although those numbers are expected to skyrocket in coming years.

Studios argue that it is too early to know how much money they can make from offering entertainment on the Internet, cell phones, iPods and other devices.

Hollywood unions have long regretted a decision made in 1984 to accept a small percentage of home video sales because studios said the technology was untested and that costs were high. Writers get only about 3 cents on a typical DVD retailing for $20.

The guilds have tried and failed for two decades to increase video payments, even as DVDs have become more profitable for studios than box office receipts.