TENTATIVE DEAL REACHED IN WRITERS STRIKE

The WGA and producers have reached a tentative agreement which could send the writers back to work as early as Monday. Here’s the key quote from the WGA: “It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery,” they said in a memo to members. “It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, ‘When they get paid, we get paid.’”

Explains the NY Times, “The tentative agreement became possible when the sides reached a handshake deal last week on a crucial term under which writers would be paid a fixed residual amounting to about $1,300 for the right to stream a television program online. In the third year of their contract, the writers would achieve one of their major goals — payments amounting to 2 percent of the distributor’s revenue from such streams.”

I’m impressed by the acceptance that the internet will replace traditional, linear TV as the “primary means of content creation and delivery.”

6 comments February 9th, 2008

WSJ: YAHOO TO REJECT MICROSOFT OFFER

Lots of news for a Saturday. The Wall Street Journal just posted a story that says Yahoo’s board will spurn Microsoft’s offer because it “massively undervalues” Yahoo and doesn’t take into account the risks involved if regulators nix the deal. Microsoft offered $31 a share — a 62 percent premium at the time of the offer — but the WSJ says a source said the company probably wouldn’t listen to anything under $40 a share. So would Microsoft go hostile? Unlikely, as that would cause “deep resentment” among the rank-and-file engineers, the Journal reports. And Yahoo has taken the “poison pill” provision to help prevent a hostile takeover. (WSJ sub. req.)

1 comment February 9th, 2008