The following piece of producer propaganda will appear in ads in tomorrow's trades. It was taken from the AMPTP website! The Ol’ Dog has added a few pertinent comments.
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An Open Letter To The Entertainment Industry
AMPTP:Our industry has worked hard this year to make six major labor agreements. These six agreements were intensely fought and aggressively negotiated by all sides, with major compromises made by everyone involved. Now, with all the other Guilds and Unions having accomplished so much, SAG is demanding that the entire industry literally throw out all of its hard work because it believes it deserves more than the 230,000 other working people in the industry.
My immediate response is CUT THE CRAP! First off, what major compromise has the AMPTP made? Secondly, are the guys who wrote this piece of crap going to tell us they deserve the multi-million dollar salaries they get. Yeah, right! Geez, they are talking to the entire entertainment workforce as if they were a bunch of kids. “ Now, Billy do you think you deserve more than your sister?" Uh, it may have passed a few peoples minds that this town gives you nothing just because you deserve it. Hell, this union was formed during the Darkest Days of the Depression. And producers didn't let actors have a union because they DESERVED IT. Get real. They recognized the Screen Actors Guild on the eve of a THREATENED STRIKE. Our predecessors did not get Pension and Health or Residuals and other benefits because producers thought actors deserved it, but rather because actors struck or went to the table with a strike authorization. But since they are trying to persuade us with parental dogma, to “go-along-to-get-along” because six other unions have done so. How about considering this piece of parental logic? Remember when you tried to convince your mom to do something by listing your friends that were doing it, and mom responded with something like. “Just because six of your friends jump off a building, doesn't mean you have to do it?” Well…yeah that's how I feel about it too. Just because six other unions sell out their future for expediency and temporary harmony, and job security, doesn't mean SAG has to do it!
AMPTP: To comply with SAG's demands would mean SAG merits more than everyone else. Saying yes would jeopardize the trust we have so carefully established with the rest of the industry -- at a time when this industry needs stability to ensure that together, we effectively evolve with shifting consumer demands. To say yes to SAG would be to repudiate the hard work and compromises made by every other labor organization in the industry over the past ten months.
What a bunch of Crap! What they are really saying is if they say YES to SAG, then the other unions will want a deal as good as SAG gets. As to trust, if you want to talk to the WGA about trust--you might catch them at arbitration hearings where they've taken the AMPTP for not paying agreed upon residuals.
AMPTP: Because of SAG's failed negotiating strategy, our industry now faces the prospect of another destructive and unnecessary strike. Incredibly, this SAG strike would occur at a time when the national economy is reeling from a historic financial crisis. Just as stunningly, a SAG strike would be self-defeating from the start - with actors losing more within the first several days of the strike than they could ever hope to gain.
Oh, please, the old economic crisis bit. One only has to look at the recent box-office increases over last year and comments like those of the President of box office tracking firm “Media By Numbers" who commented in the LA Times about the hefty box-office returns with:
“This is another example of how the economy has not slowed people at all from going to watch movies, ” He said. “We’re set up to have one of the biggest Thanksgiving Weekends ever!”
Oh, and he was right!
This from the LA Times:
Ticket sales for the five-day period totaled $236 million, spurred by the Warner Bros. movie "Four Christmases," according to box-office tracking firm Media by Numbers. The only Thanksgiving weekend with higher receipts came in 2000 when theaters rang up $244.4 million with such movies as "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Unbreakable."
Like I said to the AMPTP earlier CUT THE CRAP!
AMPTP: We have made SAG members a fair offer, the same deal we have successfully offered to all the other Guilds and Unions, and we kept that offer on the table for now despite the rapid worldwide economic decline. We hope that every concerned member of our industry will study carefully the terms of our offer -- and then think long and hard about whether, at a time when millions of Americans are facing extreme financial hardship, there is anything about our offer that justifies a debilitating strike.
Yeah, millions of Americans are facing extreme financial hardship, but, but, that don’t mean actors want to join them, especially when employers are raking in 
Billions of dollars with record boxoffices. As to studying their offer, I think that is a great idea, why don’t they put up the entire thing on their website. What they have done is play unions against each other, and it has worked so well, they are pushing their most egregious proposal onto SAG. You didn't hear a lot about the DGA and WGA giving up Force Majeure, because they weren’t asked to do so. That was a little surprise for SAG from the AMPTP. Not only do they want SAG to drop claims on behalf of SAG Members who have around $60 Million dollars coming. (An illegal action that would make SAG vulnerable to lawsuits.) But they want SAG to give up force majeure in the future, a feature which has been in the SAG contract since its inception. Here’s a question for Nick and the gang; what justifies them to demand cutbacks in protections that have been in our collective bargaining agreements for decades, along with violating the core principle of SAG that signatories cannot do non-union shows.
AMPTP: We are standing firm behind our offer because it represents a pattern of hard fought agreements of the past year, and its construct is vital to the future of our industry. No single Guild or Union should be allowed to undermine the hard-won consensus over how our industry can experiment and then prosper in the speedily changing new media marketplace.
What it represents is a formula cooked up between the DGA and the AMPTP. A formula that was used by the DGA to persuade striking writers to leave the picket lines and sign the same lousy deal. (More on than later...very interesting.)
AMPTP: Signed,Peter Chernin, Chairman and CEO, the Fox Group, Bard Grey, Chairman & CEO, Paramount Pictures Corp.Robert A. Iger, President & CEO, The Walt Disney Company Michael Lynton, Chairman & CEO, Sony Pictures EntertainmentBarry M. Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros.Leslie Moonves, President & CEO, CBS Corp.Harry Sloan, Chairman & CEO, MGM Jeff Zucker, President & CEO, NBC Universal
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Now, that gapping hole the Ol’ Dog was talking about. What was not mentioned in the open letter from the AMPTP is that their current proposal signed by guilds, and trying to be forced onto the Screen Actors Guild is the first step in their mission to get rid of residuals, first on the Internet and then COMPLETELY!
What? You don’t believe me? Where’s my proof. Why it comes right from the very mouths of some of the signers of the producer propaganda above. Yep! The same people calling for SAG to sign their agreement, are the same ones vowing to call for an END TO RESIDUAL PAYMENTS! And that part in their proposal about NO RESIDUALS ON NEW MEDIA PRODUCT. Why, it ain’t the first step in getting rid of residuals COMPLETELY is it?
NAW! NOT TO WORRY! GO AHEAD SIGN THE CONTRACT! WHY WE CAN ALWAYS RENEGOTIATE IN THREE YEARS. RIGHT! JUST LIKE WE REGNEGOITATED THE VHS/DVD AND CABLE FORMULA AFTER THREE YEARS.
What you hear a lot lately by those who are running scared, is that now is not the time. Right! Hey, it’s like the guy who put off taking care of that suspicious lump when it first appeared. His friends sure miss him!
The New York Times
July 11, 2007
Hollywood Executives Call for End to Residual Payments
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
ENCINO, Calif., July 11 — In an unusually blunt session here today, several of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry’s decades-old system of paying what are called residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings.
The executives stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and shows are released on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, they want to pool such revenue and recover their costs before sharing any of the profit with the talent.
“There are no ancillary markets any more; it’s all one market,” said Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers. “This is the time to do it.”
The briefing at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group, was conducted by Mr. Meyer, Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, and Anne Sweeney, president of the Walt Disney-ABC Television Group, along with the alliance’s president, J. Nicholas Counter. It was intended to set the stage for Monday’s opening of contract talks with the Writers Guild of America unions on both coasts.
A spokesman for the Writers Guild of America West had no immediate response. But representatives of that guild and other unions said they expect to extend their compensation arrangements to new media rather than retreating from existing formulas.
The industry’s contract with the writers expires on Oct. 31, while contracts with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America the following June 30. With these deadlines looming, networks and studios have been scrambling to lock up additional episodes of shows that could be aired in the event of a strike, and movies that could be finished before the actors’ deadline. The industry executives declined to discuss specific contract proposals. But they said they would adamantly oppose any move to extend residual-like payments to the sale of movies and shows on the Web or in other new media. They repeated an earlier call for a study that would, in effect, defer decisions about such distribution channels for as long as three years.
“We need complete flexibility,” said Ms. Sweeney, who described broadcasters as being in a desperate scramble for revenue as consumers increasingly turn to online sources for programs that are often stripped of advertising. “Guild restraints limit our ability to do what we need to do,” she said.
Hey, after reading that, I'm sure you feel Reassured that they'll come back and revisit their NO RESIDUAL Policy for programs made for new media, right?
I mean now is not the time to stand up to them. Come on, you can trust these guys. After all, they only want what is best for the industry, right? 
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From the AMPTP, the folks who want to take away actors residuals, an Open Letter to the Entertainment Industry with a big gapping hole in it.
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