Hollywood Should Balk at Prospect of a Strike Two

One minute after midnight tonight, the contract expires between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). There's no imminent strike threat, but when another Hollywood union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), announces its separately negotiated deal with AMPTP on July 8, SAG may reject the particulars of that deal and seek strike authorization from its own membership.

Bottom line: There could be a strike two, another crippling Hollywood work stoppage in the same 12-month period. Bottom line to the bottom line: Anyone else who goes on strike in Hollywood this year is a certifiable idiot.

What's at stake, in the small picture, are the same issues for which the Writers Guild of America (WGA) walked out in November 2007 -- chief among them, clearer and fairer compensation for new media. What complicates the picture, this time around, is that the WGA settled for a fairly paltry deal, and AFTRA is said to be about to do the same.

So the choices by the SAG membership are either to follow the WGA and AFTRA lead and settle for less, or go on strike and not settle at all. Meanwhile, there's the additional complicating factor of a SAG-AFTRA membership overlap. SAG, by far the bigger gorilla in this fight, has 120,000 members to 70,000 for AFTRA -- And 44,000 of those AFTRA members, more than 60 percent, also belong to SAG.

Messy, messy, messy. And AMPTP, the greedy land baron in all of this, is stirring up the pot, and the press, by putting famous faces to the feuding factions. Tom Hanks and Susan Sarandon are on the AFTRA side. Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen are siding with SAG.

But a second strike would be so crippling to the flow of Hollywood entertainment right now that whatever gains negotiated by a protracted strike would most likely be offset by long-term losses. Not only in revenue, but in momentum. In audience loyalty. In audience numbers, period.

Many movies, right now, are hitting the pause buttons on their production remotes, waiting to see what will happen next. Many TV shows, on the other hand, are diving headlong into production to stockpile whatever they can -- even though, if a SAG strike becomes a reality in August, the fall TV season will be even more pathetic than it already threatens to be.

And that, my friends, could throw the entire broadcast TV equation into free fall. Deny and anger the audience one more time, and the networks may never get them back.