Actors, Hollywood studios reach deal, avert strike

The Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached a tentative deal on Friday on a new film and television contract that ends a bitter deadlock and would avert a strike the industry fears in a recession. Sources said the Internet pay aspects of the tentative deal were similar to what SAG's sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, accepted in July last year, which included concessions SAG hard-liners had opposed. That deal called for a doubling of the rate of reuse fees, or "residuals," paid for TV shows downloaded on the Web. That rate went to about 2.1 percent of a distributor's gross revenues from roughly 1 percent, but the higher rate only kicks in after the first 100,000 downloads. The AFTRA deal also required the studios to hire union talent when producing for the Web, depending on a production's budget.