The Conflict Continues

The WGA and AMPTP won't be shaking hands any time soon.

Since negotiations fell apart on Friday, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have been speaking aggressively about one another. The AMPTP described the WGA as "organizers". The WGA, meanwhile, said that the producers want to create "confusion, doubt, fear and dissention" in order to undercut the writers' "solidarity". It seems unlikely that the negotiations will continue any time soon.

In the midst of the continued verbal lashings from both sides, the Television Critics Association (TCA) has decided to cancel the winter press tour. It was previously reported that NBC had pulled out of the January event, but now the whole tour has been called off. TCA president Dave Walker said that it was a matter of timing. "I and everyone else involved did everything we could to keep this on track," he told Daily Variety. "It's disappointing, but it now seems it was inevitable." He went on to say that cancelling the tour was up to the networks, not the TCA, and that the summer 2008 and winter 2009 tours are still being planned.

The research firm Online Testing Exchange did a recent survey of 3,100 members of the general viewing public. Of those who participated, 73% were aware of the WGA strike, but only 41% supported the action. This is lower than the 54% support rate among 999 Variety subscribers that were surveyed, implying that the general public does not support the strike as much as those in the business. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said that they were disappointed to see so many repeats of their favorite shows, and 44% said that they will watch the repeats anyway. Twenty-nine percent of the participants said that they'd lose interest in new shows if the strike continues for too long. While 41% of the people in the survey anticipate renting and/or buying more DVDs during the strike, only 19% said that they would visit the movie theater more often, and only 16% plan to watch original programming on the internet. Twenty-six percent said that they will probably watch more reality television during the strike.

The strike update, the TCA news and the poll are all from Variety.

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