With the members of the Writers Guild of America on strike these past few months, the entertainment industry has been creaking to a halt.  Forseeing a possible strike in their own future, and with the same items on the line as the writers, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) have been looking to make their own deals with the Association of  Motion Piction and Television Producers (AMPTP).  Today, we've gotten the good news that the DGA has come to a tentative agreement with the AMPTP, and the terms are everything the writers have been asking for since before the strike began.

The new three-year contract, from the press release:

* Increases both wages and residual bases for each year of the contract.

* Establishes DGA jurisdiction over programs produced for distribution on the Internet.

* Establishes new residuals formula for paid Internet downloads (electronic sell-through) that essentially doubles the rate currently paid by employers.

* Establishes residual rates for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet.

Gil Cares, chairman of the DGA negotiations committee, said, "Our fundamental goal in these negotiations was to protect our interests in the present while laying the groundwork for a future whose outlines are not yet clear.  We knew that gaining jurisdiction over new-media production and winning fair compensation for the reuse of our work on the Internet were the key issues for setting a framework for the future, but we also had to secure real gains for our members in today's world."

These gains are the same demands the WGA has been making for months.  Let us hope for the sake of the rest of this television season, not to mention the Academy Awards and any number of film projects teetering on the edge, that the two parties can sit back down at the table and use these terms to write a fair contract for the writers, and a good basis for the actors when it's their turn to talk.

(Source: PrimeNewswire)