Carol A. Lombardini

Top television series slated to have a new season next year likely owe a thanks to Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

The alliance was deadlocked in negotiations with the Writers Guild of America in May, and a repeat of the 2007 writer’s strike that drastically changed the TV landscape and cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars seemed unavoidable. But with only hours to go before the deal expired and a strike was triggered, a new deal was brokered.

Lombardini said the writer’s guild had two primary concerns: its health plan, which had been running a deficit for years, and exclusivity agreements that barred writers from working on multiple shows.

The latter has been an issue of late for writers, as the way shows get produced has drastically changed since the exclusivity agreements were implemented. While most network shows used to get a slate of 22 episodes, the average series nowadays typically gets between 10 and 13.

“They were spending what they considered to be an inordinately long period of time to produce a small number of episodes,” Lombardini said. “That was a big problem from the point of view of the writers.”

The guild proposed a straightforward solution: pay the writers more. The writers made around $6,500 a week under the previous deal, and under the new deal they sought $10,000 per week. That didn’t work for the alliance.

“Any deal that’s going to require you to pay about 50 percent more, you’re going to have to look carefully at that,” Lombardini said.

A workaround that would loosen the rules on writer exclusivity, allowing guild members to seek out other work for short order shows in the interim period between seasons, was an agreeable solution for both sides.

“We’re proud of the fact that we’ve concluded agreements with two of the major talent guilds without a strike, and we’ve done so in a way that has been responsive to the needs of our companies and responsive to the needs of the people who work for us,” Lombardini said.

— Steven Crighton