AFTRA Votes to Settle, Fellow Union's Hopes SAG

The biggest news coming out of Hollywood right now isn't coming from the press tour, but from the union halls. The American Federation of TV and Radio Artists (AFTRA) has announced that more than 60 percent of its 70,000 members voted last night to accept the proposed three-year deal, and thus avoid a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP).

This is not what many in the larger Screen Actors Guild (SAG) wanted, because the deals negotiated thus far -- by the Writers Guild of America (WGA), whose strike action crippled TV and movie production for much of last season, and by the Directors Guild of America -- have been fairly weak. But since so has the economy, there's been sagging support for a SAG strike at this time, despite its long-term implications.

What it means, though, is that while SAG now will return to the table to negotiate with AMPTP, the final resolution is more likely to be a grudging acceptance of the WGA-DGA-AFTRA terms than a defiant stand-alone work stoppage. Once the writers settled for less than stellar terms, the rest of this round of strike talks has played out pretty much as predicted.

The good news: As we hear more and more from the Television Critics Association press tour the next two weeks about what's coming up on TV, at least we can be more assured it will come up on TV.