ABC, unions reach deal for mobisodes

Disney-ABC Television Group's Touchstone Television finally came to an agreement with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), west, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) to produce Lost Video Diaries, original mini-episodes inspired by the popular ABC series Lost. Based on the show's original concept, the Lost Video Diaries are created for an initial release on mobile devices. Reports circling the Internet suggest that yesterday's announcement of Toyota sponsoring Fox's mobisodes of Prison Break served as an impetus for the labor groups to come to terms.

The terms of the agreement are as follows: WGA and DGA members will get a residual similar to pay TV, or about 1.2 percent of the license fee for mobile content use and a similar share of the distributor's take if the content is posted on the Internet. Ad-supported Internet content raises it to 2 percent. Actors will get a $75 dollar advance payment, creditable against a residual of 3.6 percent of the license fee--the same for the Internet, but if the Internet content is ad-supported the residual is raised to 6 percent.

For more on the deal:
- see the press releases from SAG [1], WGA [2] and DGA [3]