Despite narrowing their differences over digital media compensation, bargainers for ACTRA and North American producers failed to reach a new contract on Thursday.

Two days of mediated talks in Toronto ended with producer representatives proposing a 5% buyout fee for the digital media rights to performances by ACTRA members over a five-year use period.

That advance on digital royalties from American producers, the CFTPA and APFTQ would come on top of a 6% wage increase proposed over the three years of a new Independent Production Agreement.

CFTPA chief negotiator John Barrack said the 5% buyout offer was ‘generous’ and was tailored to an evolving new media production environment.

Late Thursday afternoon, ACTRA chief negotiator Stephen Waddell insisted the 5% digital buyout offer was only a ‘token’ payment, and should come on top of a 10% wage increase over three years as part of any new IPA deal.

‘They want use of the whole digital media universe for 1% a year,’ Waddell told Playback Daily, or $5.65 annually for a day’s work based on a current minimum rate for a principal ACTRA actor of $565 per eight-hour day.

Waddell added that the American studio representatives in this week’s talks continued to take a hard line on digital media compensation, in contrast to the Canadian producers represented at the table.

‘[The Americans] are the hard bind in these negotiations. We could likely get an agreement with the Canadians,’ he insisted.

Separate contract talks last week in British Columbia between the UBCP, representing actors in that province, and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, negotiating on behalf of Hollywood studio interests, also stalled over the issue of how to compensate performers for new media rights.

The ACTRA-CFTPA talks this week at the Westin Harbour Castle hotel in Toronto were led by Elizabeth MacPherson, a mediator appointed last week by the federal minister of labor, and Richard Champagne, a mediator separately named by the Quebec Labour Relations Board.

After introducing themselves and laying out the ground rules for their mediation, MacPherson and Champagne adjourned the parties to separate rooms, and moved back and forth with offers and counter-offers.

Besides negotiating new media use fees, ACTRA and producer representatives also considered how new media would be defined as part of a new IPA deal — namely whether it would include only ‘currently known media,’ including cell phones, Internet streaming and other PDAs, or whether new media use would also encompass products not known and yet to be created.

Late Thursday afternoon, MacPherson proposed that additional negotiations between the two sides take place next week by phone, as the CFTPA’s Barrack will be attending the Berlin International Film Festival.

The next phase of the IPA talks will also include court-ordered arbitration set for Feb. 19, with veteran mediator Marilyn Nairn set to consider the legality of ACTRA’s ongoing strike and use of controversial continuation letters.