Negotiations between the striking Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers have failed once again.

"We're puzzled and disheartened by an ongoing WGA negotiating strategy that seems designed to delay or derail talks rather than facilitate an end to the strike," the AMPTP said in an end-of-day statement following Friday's session of talks.

"Their quixotic pursuit of radical demands led them to begin this strike and now has caused this breakdown in negotiations," the AMPTP claims.

The announcement came after initially the last round of talks seemed to foreshadow the strike's end. Thursday both sides issued upbeat reports about progress in ending the dispute that has brought much of the industry's TV and film production to a standstill.

"We received a similar ultimatum through back channels prior to the discussions of Nov. 4," WGA negotiating committee chair John Bowman said Friday night after talks broke off. "At that time, we were assured that if we took DVDs off the table, we would get a fair offer on new-media issues. That offer never materialized."

The WGA are pushing for more residuals from new media distribution (such films or TV shows sold online), while producers reject the guild's demands as unworkable and too expensive. Also, the WGA-requested compensation package for DVD sales would cost about $220 million over three years, a small fraction of the around $24 billion in revenues generated by U.S. DVD sales and rentals over the last year.

"We reject the idea of an ultimatum," Bowman said. "Although a number of items we have on the table are negotiable, we cannot be forced to bargain with ourselves. The AMPTP has many proposals on the table that are unacceptable to writers, but we have never delivered ultimatums."

In 1988, a 22-week walkout by the WGA delayed the start of that year's fall television season and cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million. This time, billions may be lost, according to some estimates. It's enough to note that the motion picture and TV industry generates $30 billion in annual economic activity for Los Angeles County alone.