4. What role (with examples) did negotiating skills seem to play in the WGA producers negotiations? The talks between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers

(producers) began tense, and then got tenser. In their first meeting, the two sides got nothing done. As one producer said, Everyone in the room is concerned about this. 92 The two sides were far apart on just about all the issues.

However, the biggest issue was how to split revenue from new media, such as when television shows move to DVDs or the Internet. The producers said they wanted a profit-splitting system rather than the current residual system. Under the residual system, writers continue to receive residuals or income from shows they write every time they re shown (such as when Seinfeld appears in reruns, years after the last original show was shot).Writers Guild executives did their homework.

They argued, for instance, that the projections showed producers revenues from advertising and subscription fees had recently jumped by about 40%.