SAG Reads Economy and Settles with Producers
As recently reported by the Wall Street journal, the Screen Actors Guild has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. As reported, the deal is essentially the same one offered months ago. SAG was unable to gain jurisdiction over new media or gain financial ground on residual payments for DVDs.
But given the continuing softening of the economy and the dearth of reported feature films in California, a status quo agreement was as much as SAG could hope for. The agreement is for only two years, allowing SAG to return to a schedule that allow it to negotiate alongside AFTRA and the Directors Guild in the next round of talks. Hopefully by then the economy will have rebounded and remuneration strategies for new media will have begun to emerge in earnest.
All in all, the agreement being sent to the rank and file reflects a realistic reading of the economy.
But given the continuing softening of the economy and the dearth of reported feature films in California, a status quo agreement was as much as SAG could hope for. The agreement is for only two years, allowing SAG to return to a schedule that allow it to negotiate alongside AFTRA and the Directors Guild in the next round of talks. Hopefully by then the economy will have rebounded and remuneration strategies for new media will have begun to emerge in earnest.
All in all, the agreement being sent to the rank and file reflects a realistic reading of the economy.
