Negotiations between the striking Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers are set to resume today. WGA West president Patric Verrone, speaking at a picket line Monday at Paramount, said according to Variety: "We have to get a better proposal on the table."

"If the number of eyeballs go up, then our residual would go up," a source close to WGA negotiators said to the Hollywood Reporter. "Our proposal tries to find a way of making things a little more flexible."

Four days of secret negotiations failed last week to come up with a pay formula to end the strike. 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.

According to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers representing the studios, writers rejected a "groundbreaking" offer that would have yielded an extra 130 million dollars over the 1.3-billion-dollar total they currently earn a year.

"Everybody knows what a DVD costs and a writer gets four to five cents for a DVD sale," WGA member Bryce Zabel, a screenwriter, said earlier this month. "We've asked for eight. And they've said that's outrageous." The requested compensation package 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.

In a letter to members, the guild blasted the studios' proposal as inadequate, saying it would pay only 250 dollars for a year's re-use of an hour-long program streamed on the Web, in contrast to the 20,000 dollars currently paid for a network re-run.

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.

The guilds also said the companies refused to grant them jurisdiction over original content produced for the Internet.