With SAG pushed to the sidelines until the end of the month, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists and the majors have held two days of news-free negotiations, Variety reports.
The two sides met for a second day Thursday on AFTRA’s primetime contract and continued to observe a news blackout on their talks at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers. A third day of negotiations is set for today, followed by a break for the weekend.
The AFTRA talks are widely expected to lead to a deal — unlike the Screen Actors Guild’s 18 days of feature-primetime bargaining with the AMPTP. On Wednesday, AFTRA spurned a SAG bid to postpone its negotiations so the guild could continue its talks, which ended as scheduled late Tuesday over SAG’s objections.
SAG, whose talks had been extended twice, has insisted it was within a few hours of reaching a deal, although the congloms insist that wasn’t the case.
AFTRA also nixed on Wednesday a SAG request that the two unions collaborate on the primetime talks. AFTRA split off from joint bargaining with SAG in late March following a series of bitter jurisdictional disputes.
