Leaders of striking writers accept studios’ deal

A minimum of four weeks would be needed for producers to start from scratch with their first post-strike episodes of comedies and get them on the air, industry members said. A drama would require six to eight weeks from concept to broadcast.

“It will be all hands on deck for the writing staff,” said Chris Mundy, co-executive producer of CBS’ drama “Criminal Minds.” He hopes to get a couple of scripts in the pipeline right away, with about seven episodes airing by the end of May.

“It’s a real balancing act,” he said, “to get up and running as fast as possible, but not let the quality slip.”

Negotiating committee chairman John Bowman said a turning point in negotiations was last month’s Golden Globes, when the star-studded ceremony was scrapped after actors refused to cross writers’ picket lines.

The Globes showed the strength of the writers’ resolve and solidarity, Bowman said.

The threat of a similar fate for this month’s Academy Awards also was a powerful bargaining chip, said chief negotiator David Young.

“It was going to be a huge thing for the industry to lose the Oscars,” Young said. The Feb. 24 ceremony now appears likely to proceed in its full glory and with writers on board to script host and presenter banter.

Academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger said Saturday that Oscar organizers were hopeful, but that writing on the ceremony could not begin until the strike was over.

The strike, the first in 20 years for the writers guild, began Nov. 5 and included bitter public exchanges between the guild and the producers alliance. Talks collapsed in December.

In January, the studios reached an agreement in separate negotiations with the Directors Guild of America. Top media company executives, including Peter Chernin of News Corp. and Robert Iger of The Walt Disney Co., asked the writers to resume bargaining.

What were termed informal talks between the executives and guild leaders led to the tentative contract that writers will be voting on.

Together, the East and West Coast guilds represent 12,000 writers, with about 10,000 of those involved in the strike that has cost the Los Angeles area economy alone an estimated $1 billion or more.

Based on the guild’s summary of the deal, it’s similar to the agreement reached with directors.

It provides union jurisdiction over projects created for the Internet based on certain guidelines, sets compensation for streamed, ad-supported programs and increases residual payments for downloaded movies and TV programs.

Writers would get a maximum flat fee of about $1,200 for streamed programs in the deal’s first two years and then get a percentage of a distributor’s gross in year three — the last point an improvement on the directors deal, which remains at the flat payment rate.

Both writers and directors guild deals include a provision that compensation for ad-supported streaming doesn’t kick in until after a window of between 17 to 24 days deemed “promotional” by the studios.

Some writers have balked at that, saying Internet traffic is heaviest in the first few days.

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