Talks Collapse in Commercial Actors’ Strike

A bid to restart contract talks between striking actors and the advertising industry ended with neither side showing a willingness to budge. The two sides reported making little progress during a pair of meetings Thursday, their first face-to-face talks since before the 11-week-old strike began. A Screen Actors Guild spokesman said negotiators called it quits after a third session Friday. The SAG spokesman, Greg Krizman, said no further talks were scheduled in the dispute, which centers on the residuals actors earn for their appearances in television commercials. Representatives of the ad industry could not be reached for comment. SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists want to be paid as commercials air on cable TV instead of receiving a flat fee, as they do now. The ad industry wants to do away with pay-per-play and instead institute a flat-rate scale for both network and cable ads. The collapse of the talks, arranged by federal mediators, came despite the widely held view that advertising imperatives driven by the approach of the fall TV season, together with mounting economic pressures faced by the 135,000 affected union members, would provide new impetus for a settlement.