Rosenberg Re-Elected SAG President

LOS ANGELES – Screen Actors Guild President Alan Rosenberg was re-elected to a second term amid growing concern about a possible actors’ strike next year.

Rosenberg defeated three other candidates Thursday, carrying about 47 percent of nearly 25,000 votes cast, SAG spokeswoman Pamela Greenwalt said.

His opponents were Seymour Cassel, Charley M. De la Pena and Barry Simmonds. His closest competitor, Cassel, garnered about 44 percent of the vote. SAG has approximately 120,000 members.

Rosenberg, who was a regular on the TV series “LA Law” and “The Guardian,” promised to secure a fair deal when the guild renegotiates with studios next year.

“I’m going to fight like hell for a fair share of the enormous profits our work generates in the entertainment industry,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday night.

Studios are getting close to a deadline for starting production on new films. The actors’ contract expires June 30, meaning films would have to be finished shooting by then if a strike was called.

For TV, a strike could disrupt shooting schedules and cause networks to fill their schedules with more reality shows.

In recent months, film and television production has been accelerated in preparation for a possible strike as early as this fall by the Writers Guild.

That contract expires Oct. 31 and the two sides are still far apart when it comes to payment for films and TV shows that are distributed online and to portable devices such as cell phones.

Both Rosenberg and Writers Guild President Patric Verrone were elected in 2005 with a pledge to squeeze more money from the studios from new technologies and the sale of DVDs.

Rosenberg has said revamping the formula to give actors a larger share of the lucrative DVD market is a key goal.

Both unions also want to make gains in the nascent, yet potentially huge online market.

Studios have argued that profits from DVDs barely cover the escalating cost of making feature films. They are also pressing for freedom to experiment with digital business models without having to pay writers and actors each time a TV show or movie is sold on Apple Inc.’s iTunes store or streamed with advertising on a network’s Web site.

Verrone was re-elected to a second term earlier this year.