Strike Watch 2007: Meet the Studios' Go-To Guy

A few months ago, The New York Times ran a piece on Patric Verrone, president of Writers Guild of America, West. Today, the LA Times takes a look at the person who will be sitting across the table from him starting next week, when formal talks begin for an increasinlgy restless union of about 12,000 TV and film writers. That would be J. Nicholas Counter III, a bespectacled former college halfback and the man the studios have relied on for the past 25 years.

In overseeing some 400 labor contracts with writers, actors, film crews, musicians and scores of other professions, J. Nicholas Counter III has deftly kept Hollywood working, save for one major strike by writers in 1988. Despite his being the designated nemesis of Hollywood labor and taking the public slings and arrows that come with being the industry's chief negotiator, even his opponents can rarely recall Counter losing his cool.

Counter's formal title is the president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and according to the Times, the former labor lawyer's tactics "often involve putting opponents on the defensive, portraying their positions as unreasonable while rattling off statistics showing the industry's economic woes. When leaders of the Writers Guild of America recently telegraphed their demands, including securing "fair compensation" for entertainment distributed over emerging technologies, he publicly blasted them as an "assault on the industry."

"That's the sort of thing he does," said Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. "It's worked well for him in the past, but I don't know that it worked this time."

And the writers aren't Counters' only concern. He's also gearing up for similiar negotiations next year for the reps of nearly 120,000 actors, who are also interested in making gains in a time when the Internet and digital distribution continue to change how Hollywood does business.