Actors' strike disrupts makers' TV plans.(automakers television advertisements)(Brief Article)

Automakers should be deep into TV commercial production for their fall product launches. Instead, they are evading striking actors, shooting in Canada and fretting about deadlines.

Commercial actors went on strike May 1. Ad agency executives say they don't expect the walkout to end soon.

``This is going to be long and bloody,'' said one industry observer, who asked to remain anonymous.

The strike's main issue is pay for cable TV. Actors want to be paid each time their commercials air. Since the 1950s, they have been paid each time a commercial appears on broadcast TV but paid a flat fee for cable, regardless of how many times a commercial airs.

But most commercials run on cable now, meaning actors are undercompensated, said Greg Krizman, spokesman for the striking Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Strikers also want pay rules for Internet commercials.

WORKERS UNDER PROTEST

Many agencies are trying to shoot commercials with nonunion actors.

``We've been chasing Chevy all over: Oregon, Idaho, San Diego,'' Krizman said, in attempts to stop Chevrolet's agency, Campbell-Ewald, from producing a truck commercial.

An executive close to the Chevrolet situation, who asked to remain anonymous, said some commercials are going forward, such as rolling footage of cars in which the drivers ``can or cannot be union.''

Stephan Clay, a producer for Don Coleman Advertising Inc. in Southfield, Mich., said his agency continued to shoot commercials for DaimlerChrysler's Dodge Caravan minivan and Chrysler Sebring mid-sized car.

DaimlerChrysler has two crucial launches this fall, of its redesigned minivans and redesigned mid-sized cars.

``We used celebrities who weren't involved with union rules because that was their first commercial,'' said Clay.

He said picketers ``bothered the shoots,'' all in Los Angeles, but the agency completed them.

Ira Shepard, chief strike negotiator and counsel for the ad industry, said agencies are using a lot more nonunion actors to get work done. Nonunion fees for daily work in filming commercials in the United States from May 15 through June 15 were $3 million, compared with $194,208 during the same period last year, he said.

ONWARD AND UPWARD

Tim Hart, president of Hyundai's agency, Bates USA West in Irvine, Calif., said, ``We've been shooting a lot of commercials in Canada, but that's not unusual.''

Krizman said U.S. strikers are protesting use of nonunion workers in Canada.

Stephen Wayddell, national executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, said: ``We've instructed our members not to accept any struck work coming up here. However, if a U.S. company comes up here to produce and that company is a signatory to an ACTRA agreement, we have to provide services to them or it could be considered an illegal strike.''

Wayddell said all of the major automotive agencies are signatories, including Leo Burnett, J. Walter Thompson and Saatchi & Saatchi.

Ford Motor Co. is not producing commercials and hoping for the best.

``We've stopped all production until the strike is over,'' said Ford Motor Co. spokesman Bill George.

He said Ford has not canceled TV buys and doesn't have a contingency media plan for launching its fall products.

``We're nimble enough that we'll figure out a way,'' George said.

Federal mediation of the strike will resume Thursday, July 20, in New York.