Report: WGA talks "stalemated"

[villager]

Source: Deadline Hollywood

There's little more to say about Wednesday's talks other than that, unfortunately. "This is not heading in the right direction," a mogul quoted his labor exec as saying to him yesterday. Another source told me, "It's stalemated. Nothing's getting achieved."

<snip>



Read more: http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/exclusive-talks-day-3-stalemated/

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on and on we go...

[bluetrain]

1. Great...

[villager]

2. Sigh. Yeah.

n/t

[Cooley Hurd]

3. Good for the writers - fuck the money-grubbing execs!

As much as I miss TDS, Colbert, Dave & Conan, the writers deserve to be paid for ALL of their work in EVERY medium!

[villager]

4. Here's an interesting snippet from the same blog, a day earlier:

On the other hand, this is a favorite negotiating tactic of AMPTP president Nick Counter: to repeatedly offer little new until the guilds are forced to negotiate against themselves by continually reducing their demands. (Which is one reason why the writers now are toying with a provocative new tactic of raising their demands at every bargaining session.)

My question is: have the Hollywood moguls authorized Counter to delay? (Which, if so, will give fuel to the fire that the studios and networks just agreed to these talks purely for their PR value and are instead adhering to their individual timetables to declare force majeure. If the moguls think they're badly losing the PR war now, which they are, just wait until that happens.) Or has Counter talked them into this strategy because he thinks it'll work now just as it has in the past?

But that was then, and this is now. I'm hearing phrases like "jaw-dropping", "mind-boggling" and "you can gape at the chutzpah" to describe Tuesday's session. But I also hear the writers are determined not to feel frustrated or angry. "You've got to admire the kabuki of it," a source told me. "You can look at this as some really sophisticated and interesting negotiating tactic, or as stonewalling. But it's also paralysis. It's one thing to go back but another to not move at all."

[Uncle Joe]

5. I agree with you, unless they strike another debate,

in which case my sympathies for the Writer's Guild will quickly evaporate.

[Godhumor]

6. I wonder when the cable companies will start getting involved in this

I'm curious to see how long this strike has to go one before people starting dropping or reducing cable subscriptions. I imagine premium prices for certain channels with no new show content coming would cause a reduction in consumer (Lord knows I have no desire to pay for FX right now).

[aquart]

7. Well, there goes my optimism.