SAG & AMPTP SCHEDULE THIRD DAY OF TALKS

Still no deal for SAG, congloms
Third day of talks scheduled
By DAVE MCNARY

SAG and the congloms haven't yet reached a feature-primetime deal but will hold a third day of talks after meeting late into Wednesday evening.
The talks recessed after 12 hours at 10 p.m. PST and will resume at 1 p.m. Thursday. Neither the Screen Actors Guild or the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers had any comment.

SAG and the congloms had not previously scheduled talks for Thursday. The additional day may indicate that the two sides are nearing a feature-primetime deal, but also underline the elusiveness of reaching a tentative deal.

Wednesday marked the second consecutive day of contract talks, with both sides adhering to a news blackout. That means there probably won't be any official announcement until negotiators reach a tentative agreement or break off talks.

If the two sides can't reach a deal by the weekend, it's highly unlikely that the talks would continue into next week. SAG officials are skedded to fly to New York on Monday to begin a week of talks with the ad industry on a new contract covering commercials.

Expectations in the biz have been growing that a tentative agreement could emerge soon. That's been bolstered since Jan. 26, when SAG's moderate coalition of board members ousted Doug Allen as national exec director, installed John McGuire as chief negotiator and replaced the negotiating committee that had been at an impasse with the majors for many months.

But a deal's not a slam dunk, even with McGuire and a new SAG task force -- no longer controlled by the hardline Membership First faction -- handling the negotiations.

For SAG to reach a deal, it would have to agree to the congloms' demand that the guild accept the new-media framework contained in the DGA, WGA and AFTRA deals. The companies have indicated they might be willing to agree to a few adjustments to the 8-month-old final offer -- meaning that complex issues such as force majeure, product placement, retroactivity and term of the contract have to be sorted out.

If a tentative deal on the feature-primetime pact emerges by Friday, SAG's national board meeting could approve it at its meeting Saturday. The pact could then be sent to SAG's 120,000 members for ratification as early as next week, with a three-week period to return the ballots.

This week's meetings are the first since SAG and the congloms held two days of talks in November, when Allen was still in charge and the negotiating committeee was controlled by Membership First. Those talks, supervised by a federal mediator, collapsed over SAG's demands for a hike in DVD residuals, product placement approval language and retroactivity.

Allen was fired last month due to growing anger among the moderates over his perceived intransigence in pursuing a strike authorization rather than making a realistic deal. The AMPTP's contended repeatedly that it won't budge from the basic terms of its final offer, made June 30 as SAG's contract expired.

Talks had been scheduled to resume on Feb. 3 and 4 but were delayed after SAG president Alan Rosenberg sued the guild and the moderate board members who voted to oust Allen in order to reinstate Allen and reinstall the abolished negotiating committee. But that legal gambit gained no traction in state court.

About 50 members of the Membership First faction, which strongly backed Allen but lost control of the guild's national board last fall, staged a second day of picketing outside the negotiations at the headquarters of the AMPTP in Sherman Oaks. Membership First is demanding that Allen be rehired, is seeking a strike authorization vote and is promising it will oppose any deal that emerges.

"This is not a negotiation -- it's a presentation of what we're going to have to settle for," said SAG member Scott Wilson, who has organized the protests.

Membership First also plans to picket at the Saturday national board meeting at SAG headquarters in Hollywood.