The blackout was lifted on communications from the negotiations ongoing between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the reveal is rather interesting.

Although the Studios are saying little, the Writers statement reveals that the offer they've been bargaining around for the last few days has been exactly the same one they refused last time around. However, now there's a new one that begins to address the Internet revenue.

Now don't be mislead by the AMPTP quoting the following in their letter:

“...will deliver more than $130 million in additional compensation above and beyond the more than $1.3 billion writers already receive each year.”

That's total across all writers, let's look at what the WGA have revealed through Deadline Hollywood Daily.

“For streaming television episodes, the companies proposed a residual structure of a single fixed payment of less than $250 for a year's reuse of an hour-long program (compared to over $20,000 payable for a network rerun). For theatrical product they are offering no residuals whatsoever for streaming.

For made-for-Internet material, they offered minimums that would allow a studio to produce up to a 15 minute episode of network-derived web content for a script fee of $1,300. They continued to refuse to grant jurisdiction over original content for the Internet.

In their new proposal, they made absolutely no move on the download formula (which they propose to pay at the DVD rate), and continue to assert that they can deem any reuse "promotional," and pay no residual (even if they replay the entire film or TV episode and even if they make money).

The AMPTP says it will have additional proposals to make but, as of Thursday evening, they have not been presented to us. We are scheduled to meet with them again on Tuesday.”

So there are additional proposals to come, although the AMPTP statement says that the WGA have asked for time to read over the proposal already made and they make no mention of making another proposal. Still, there are some reveues addressed in the new proposal to date, although they do seem much smaller on an individual writer's basis, especially when compared to that big figure that the AMPTP are touting in their statemtent.

It's all posturing at the moment, but at least the WGA seem to be giving us more of the information than ever, and this is what the audience needs to understand and get behind them...or not as the individual decision may be.

So we're on a hold until Tuesday. Meanwhile, get voting on the Writers strike voting box on the right hand side panel, I'll be pulling that together for a piece at the weekend.