2009 VOTING GUIDE   CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD 2009 VOTING GUIDE AS A PDF

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Amy Aquino to run for Secretary-Treasurer, 33 others for Board of Directors on UFS slate Unite for Strength today announced Ken Howard as its candidate for Screen Actors Guild President, and Amy Aquino as its candidate for Secretary-Treasurer in Guild elections to be held this September.  Unite for Strength will also field 33 candidates from [...]

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Ken Howard, an actor who gained national recognition for his role as the high school basketball coach of an often-fractious team, is vying to become the next president of SAG, Hollywood’s most divided union. In addition to Howard, Amy Aquino, who has a decade of previous service in SAG as a board member and vice [...]

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Tony Shalhoub, actor “This is a great decision for SAG and I’m so appreciative of everything the new leadership is doing to put the Guild back on track. They’ve obviously got the right ideas for making SAG stronger.” Stephen Collins, actor “This contract passed because members knew it was time to take advantage of the [...]

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SAG – Los Angeles, (June 9, 2009) Screen Actors Guild announced today that members have voted overwhelmingly to approve its TV/Theatrical contracts by a vote of 78 percent to 22 percent. The two-year successor agreement covers film and digital television programs, motion pictures and new media productions. The pact becomes effective at 12:01 a.m. June [...]

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Guild, AFTRA ad talks will resume Despite recent nudges by Tom Hanks and other high-profile thesps, SAG and the congloms have stayed silent about their long-stalled film-TV negotiations. The Screen Actors Guild has yet to officially acknowledge informal moves by Hanks, George Clooney and other stars to persuade the congloms to find a compromise on [...]

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With a the help of Tom Hanks and some other A-list actors, representatives of the Screen Actors Guild and the studios are quietly taking another whack and trying to work out their differences. Three weeks after the breakdown in contract negotiations, SAG leaders — including interim Executive Director David White and chief negotiator John McGuire [...]

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Four weeks slated for ad industry negotiations With SAG’s feature-primetime contract at its usual stalemate, the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA have launched what’s expected to be a month of negotiations with the ad industry over the commercials contract. Talks began Monday morning at the Crowne Plaza in New York, with both sides presenting their [...]

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Hollywood’s studios should respond to the union’s shift in leadership with a move to the middle. The Screen Actors Guild lurched in a new direction this week, sacking its top executive and naming a new team to bargain with Hollywood’s largest studios. After months of infighting, the moderate Unite for Strength faction that won control [...]

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Yesterday, the Screen Actor’s Guild’s new Interim National Executive Director, David White, sent an email to members, setting a tone of unity and moving forward. It was a very hopeful sign of the new era in place at SAG headquarters. The message was calm, eloquent and forward-looking—in other words, something entirely new from SAG HQ. [...]

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WHERE does the Screen Actors Guild go from here? Hollywood tried to get its head around that question on Tuesday after the firing of Doug Allen, the guild’s executive director and chief architect of its hard-line approach to labor negotiations. Is a strike now off the table? Is the guild ready to accept a contract [...]

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Move follows brutal battle over negotiations Doug Allen, the lightning rod at the center of the Screen Actors Guild’s bitter polarization, has been fired as national exec director and chief negotiator. Allen’s gig ended Monday afternoon; several hours earlier, the moderates had delivered “written assent” documents terminating him — two weeks after a 28-hour filibuster [...]

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The board majority of the Screen Actors Guild today stepped up its efforts to oust the union’s executive director, making its case directly to members. In an e-mail statement to SAG members, the board’s dominant coalition said it no longer had confidence in the leadership of Doug Allen, citing his “failed strategy” for securing a [...]

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Sources from inside SAG’s marathon board meeting blasted Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg as a “corrupt and dirty chair,” asserting that he and his Membership First allies repeatedly abused parliamentary rules throughout the “surreal” 28-hour national board meeting earlier this week in order to suppress the SAG board’s moderate majority. In support of their [...]

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Allen proposes vote on AMPTP’s offer Amidst a brutal internal war, leaders of the Screen Actors Guild have put their divisive strike authorization on hold until at least next week so they can explore making a run at a last-ditch round of negotiations with the congloms. The gambit by SAG national exec director Doug Allen [...]

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Some call it a Hail Mary pass. Beleaguered Screen Actors Guild Executive Director Doug Allen, who barely survived an effort to oust him from his job at a marathon board meeting this week, is now attempting to make nice with his critics on the board in an apparent last-ditch effort to keep his job. But [...]

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“THUMBS up” and “thumbs down” ratings for commercials. Choose-your-own-advertisement options before shows begin. Interactive games during advertising breaks. In the last year these online advertising innovations have been popularized by Hulu, the online video Web site that will celebrate its first anniversary on Wednesday. For all that has been written about Hulu’s easy-to-use, aesthetically pleasing [...]

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AMPTP expected to accept federal mediator The sides are poised to get back to the bargaining table soon — but the more important question is whether SAG or the majors are inclined to budge enough to reach a deal. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is expected to confirm as early as today [...]

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With the backing of moderates, the dissidents, backed by Tom Hanks and Sally Field, now control a majority of votes on the national board. That could jump-start stalled contract talks with studios. Dissidents backed by Tom Hanks and Sally Field won six of the 11 Hollywood division seats on the national board of the Screen [...]

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