A couple months in development, we now have official rules for this challenge! The start date is March 1st and all proceeds collected will be going to Elevate Hope, a foundation that aims to heal abused and abandoned children through music and the arts.

Thank you to Sarah of Sylar’s Army for being fantastic and getting this off the ground!

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The announcement was made on Tuesday: the WGA Strike has ended. Writers will be going back to work on Wednesday. Congratulations to the WGA for continuing the Strike until their concerns were met!

From the Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-fi-strike13feb13,0,2886229.story

STRIKE REPORT

Hollywood writers strike ends

Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

After 100 days, WGA members vote overwhelmingly to go back to work.

By Claudia Eller and Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

February 13, 2008

The strike is over.

Hollywood’s costly 100-day walkout came to a widely welcomed end Tuesday after members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to go back to work.

More than 90% of the 3,775 writers who cast ballots in Los Angeles
and New York voted to immediately end the work stoppage, capping the
entertainment industry’s most contentious labor dispute in recent history.

“Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed,” said Patric M. Verrone, president of the WGA, West.

On Feb. 25, writers are expected to ratify a new three-year contract that ensures them a stake in the revenue generated when their movies, television shows and other creative works are distributed on the Internet. Whether the benefits from the new contract will be enough to offset the income writers and others lost because of the strike is a matter of debate.

Steven Beer, an entertainment attorney at Greenberg Traurig, predicted that working writers may have fewer opportunities as studios use the strike as a means to cut programming budgets, greenlight fewer pilots, reduce fees and limit the number of production deals on their lots.

“Writers got hard-fought and well earned improvements but it could be tougher sledding for the rank and file in the future,” he said.

Other experts believe the writers won a victory that transcends any financial gains.

“It was a defining moment,” said economist Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. “It showed that a very disparate group of individuals could act with real solidarity — and that packed real economic power.”

The walkout, which began Nov. 5, proved to be far more economically damaging than the studios had expected, shutting down more than 60 TV
shows, hampering ratings and depriving the networks of tens of millions in advertising dollars.

Labor experts said the crippling effect of the strike helped writers achieve gains they might not have otherwise attained.

The new contract gives them residual payments for shows streamed over
the Internet and secures the union’s jurisdiction for programming created for the Web.

“They successfully faced down six multinational media conglomerates and established a beachhead on the Internet,” said Jonathan Handel, former associate counsel for the Writers Guild of America, West and an attorney at TroyGould. “When you consider what they were initially offered and the enormous odds they faced, that’s quite an achievement.”

Handel noted that studios had originally balked at writers’ demands for new media residuals, proposing a multiyear study instead.

Yet the new contract falls short of what writers were initially seeking.

“It’s a good deal, but not a great one,” said Handel, adding that both sides made key compromises.

For example, writers received guarantees that any guild member hired to create original shows for the Web would be covered under a union contract. But the tentative contract enables studios to hire nonunion writers to work on low-budget Internet shows, giving them the flexibility they sought to compete in the burgeoning world of Web entertainment.

The writers agreement was largely patterned after a recent deal studios made with directors. Writers, however, got some important improvements, especially in pay for shows that are streamed on advertising-supported websites.

Writers were unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to shorten the 17- to 24-day window that studios have to stream their shows for promotional purposes without paying residuals. Many writers complained that most viewers watch repeats online within days after the initial broadcast.

Entertainment attorney Alan Wertheimer, who was hired by the guild in January to help break the logjam in its negotiations, had extracted a handshake agreement from studio chief executives for a “favored nations” provision related to new media, assuring writers that they would also receive any improvements actors may get in their upcoming contract negotiations.(Directors got a similar verbal promise.) The actors’ contract expires June 31.

But last Friday, when lawyers on both sides were hurriedly drafting the final writers contract, Wertheimer heard from WGA insiders that the studios forgot what they had verbally promised a week earlier. When confronted, the CEOs relented and agreed to honor it.

With the strike now over, economists are tallying up the cost to the industry and the Los Angeles region. Measuring the financial losses is inherently difficult and estimates vary widely.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development
Corp., estimates the walkout cost the local economy more than $3 billion. Of that total, an estimated $772 million came from lost wages by writers and production workers, $981 million by various businesses that service the industry, including caterers to equipment rental houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.

Still, the total is relatively small considering that the L.A. economy generates $1.3 billion a day. The entertainment industry employs about 250,000 in the Los Angeles region, including the thousands who are self-employed.

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CNBC is reporting tonight that former Disney exec, Michael Eisner, has declared an agreement has been struck between the WGA and the AMPTP. More information about this development will be posted as it is obtained. What it means to us in the Save Nathan Petrelli Campaign is that it is time to fully mobilize our efforts.

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