Landmark negotiations between indie producers and broadcasters aimed at hammering out a program-rights agreement have yet to move beyond talks about talks.

After a week, negotiators for the CFTPA and conventional broadcasters are still struggling to agree on a framework for the negotiations that, ultimately, are intended to settle long-standing disagreements about rights and payment in new media.

The conventional broadcasters want to negotiate as a single grouping, while the producers want parallel talks, with the CBC and each private broadcaster at a separate table. The CFTPA reps also unveiled ‘principles’ that underpin forthcoming concrete proposals on how to define and value ancillary rights.

The economic stakes in the dispute are enormous as producers and conventional broadcasters, both of which have a hand in the old broadcast world, attempt to find new audiences and advertising revenues on the digital frontier.

For that reason, CFTPA EVP John Barrack says the current terms-of-trade negotiations are designed as more of a summit in want of an agreement, rather than as divisive contract talks.

‘This is not a labor negotiation. This is a partnership. But partners have to have a degree of equality, otherwise there’s no partnership,’ says Barrack.

The thorny issue of new media rights led to ACTRA’s strike last year, and to the Hollywood writers strike that followed stateside. The current contract talks between the major studios and the Screen Actors Guild are similarly hung up over new media residual rights.

The terms-of-trade talks also come as conventional broadcasters have seen their traditional business model undermined by the Internet and audience fragmentation. As a result, they have attempted to claw back lost viewership by acquiring rights to the web and other emerging digital windows and platforms.

Producers complain that broadcasters are doing so with blanket licences; that they short-change program creators and treat them as little more than service producers. Broadcasters insist that a business model for new media product has yet to emerge, which hampers attempts to value ancillary rights.

The fact that both sides are even talking about an agreement on new media rates is down to the CRTC, which has urged the broadcasters and producers to meet each other halfway to forge a final deal.

The terms of trade talks are set to resume next week.