Producers’ ‘Final Offer’ Awaited by Directors

Directors Guild of America negotiators, in a late-night session, were still awaiting a “final offer” from film and television producers several hours after the 6 p.m. deadline previously set by the directors.

Terms of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’ promised offer were not immediately disclosed.

Proposals had changed hands in vigorous negotiating sessions Thursday and Friday with guild spokesman Chuck Warn saying “some progress” had been made.

Friday evening, however, DGA President Gilbert Cates said producers were still demanding unacceptable roll-backs in residuals, which are payments made for movies and television programs that are reshown on cable channels or sold for network syndication.

Will Vote on Offer

The guild’s national executive committee was set to vote this morning on an offer. The committee could launch an industry-wide directors strike as early as today, but a guild spokesman said any practical result of the strike wouldn’t be noticeable until Monday.

On another entertainment industry strike front, representatives of NBC and striking technicians prepared for their first bargaining talks in nearly a month.

A federal mediator called for negotiators from the network and the National Assn. of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) to meet in New York July 20 for new talks aimed at ending the union’s strike against the network.

The planned meeting, called by Brian Flores, New York regional director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, would be the first contract talks since June 16. The union’s 2,800 members at NBC walked out June 29.

At the same time, lawyers for U.S. Atty. Richard Bonner promised in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that he will not repeat the kind of request that barred a non-union KNBC-TV Channel 4 news crew from a press conference last week.

Bonner’s attorneys made the pledge after U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian issued a preliminary injunction and directed that Bonner disseminate a policy statement to the major news media promising to include all news media in any of his future press conferences.

Tevrizian issued a temporary restraining order last week after Bonner ejected the KNBC crew from his press conference on July 1 because unionized news crews for eight other Los Angeles television stations refused to film his presentation in their presence.

Tevrizian said that Bonner did not follow the dictates of any official policy, but had instead “exceeded his (own individual) discretion” by excluding the KNBC camera crew. The order will be lifted, Tevrizian added, as soon as Bonner “reduces to writing a policy (statement) and sends it to the various news media.”

Times staff writer Jay Sharbutt in New York contributed to this story.