DGA, AMPTP Pick Negotiation Start Date

The Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have decided on Dec. 5 as the start date for negotiations on DGA's new collective bargaining agreement. The current three-year pact expires June 30, 2017.

That came in a joint announcement.

The agreement covers TV shows and movies shot on film and covers directors, assistant directors and unit production managers and everything from salaries and holidays to director's cuts, looping, dubbing and credits.

One thing DGA and AMPTP had already agreed on was that they weren't going to weigh in until the next announcement about the talks, which came Thursday with the picking of that Dec. 5 date.

Another point of agreement between the studios and DGA were that they both opposed the FCC's set-top box/app "unlocking" proposal, saying it could adversely affect the livelihoods of everyone who makes a living in the TV, film and music industries. That proposal appears to be a casualty of the new administration, at least not a vote anytime soon.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.