A war of bombinating rhetoric is being waged between leaders of the Association of Talent Agents and the Screen Actors Guild. In a letter to SAG membership on Wednesday, guild President William Daniels charged that ATA's proposals run "counter to the California Labor Law. ... the truth is that this is simply out of our hands. We cannot address this matter until the ATA first deals with state law." On Feb. 8, the ATA charged that SAG's position represented a "misrepresentation" of state law and warned, "The SAG/agent relationship is in danger of being irreparably severed."

Warner Bros. has denied British reports that filming of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is drastically behind schedule and that the production could be shut down because of the U.K.'s strict child labor laws. A spokesman for the studio said that it had requested permission for the child actors of the movie to work 20 days more than the original permits had stipulated but insisted that the extension request was "entirely precautionary" and that the production is currently on schedule. A spokesman for star Daniel Radcliffe's school district in London said that the extension would be granted if the boy's school approves of his progress with the tutor on set. "Our real concern is exploitation," the spokesman told today's (Thursday) New York Daily News, adding that in Daniel's case, exploitation did not appear to be a problem. "I hear he's getting a nice wedge of money," the spokesman said.

A Utah legislator has dropped his effort to push through a law that would have made it illegal for a theater to allow minors into R-rated movies unaccompanied by an adult. As reported by the online entertainment magazine Inside, Rep. David L. Hogue altered his bill after an MPAA lobbyist pointed out that the law would not be able to pass constitutional muster and that it would encourage the industry not to rate films that would ordinarily receive an R rating. Hogue's bill now calls for theater owners to be fined if they allow teens into movies that violate the "harmful to minors" statute already on the books in Utah. The MPAA lobbyist told Inside: "The chances of finding a [studio] movie that meets the 'harmful to minors' standard are virtually none."

Sotheby's has scheduled a March 21 auction in Milan of furniture and decorative items belonging to Italian director Franco Zeffirelli. Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times reported that many of the items were originally created for Zeffirelli's films and stage productions. Zeffirelli, who indicated that some of the items going on the block had been retrieved from storage, said that he had decided to sell them "so that other people can enjoy the pieces and take them on yet further travels." Among the items to be sold is the bed used in Zeffirelli's 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet and two portraits of Elizabeth Taylor as an opera singer used as props in the 1988 film Il Giovane Toscanini.

Actress Rosemary DeCamp, a perennial fixture during the "golden age of radio" and the early years of television, died Tuesday in Torrance, CA at the age of 90. She was Jackie Gleason's first TV wife, when she co-starred with him on the original The Life of Riley sitcom in 1949. Her last appearance on series television was in the late '60s, when she played Marlo Thomas's mother on That Girl. In motion pictures, DeCamp played James Cagney's mother in the 1942 biopic (George M. Cohan) Yankee Doodle Dandy (even though she was 11 years younger than Cagney) and Robert Alda's mother in the 1945 biopic (George Gershwin) Rhapsody in Blue (she was three years younger than Alda).

X-crable ratings for its Saturday night XFL telecast again cost NBC a weekly win last week. The number of viewers for the football contest fell from 13.9 million for the opening telecast to 4.5 million for the third one, featuring the L.A. Xtreme and the Las Vegas Outlaws. It was the lowest-rated show on any of the four major networks. The fumble allowed CBS to score a win for the week with an 8.8 rating and a 14 share. NBC was in second place with an 8.4/14, edging out ABC with an 8.3/14. Fox ranked fourth with a 6.5/10.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. E.R., NBC, 18.1/29; 2. Survivor II: The Australian Outback, CBS, 16.6/25; 3. Friends Outtakes, NBC, 14.4/21; 4. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 14.1/21; 5. Friends, NBC, 14.0/22; 6. Law and Order, NBC, 13.8/23; 7. The Practice, ABC, 12.9/20; 8. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Sunday), ABC, 12.6/19; 9. Will & Grace, NBC, 12.5/19; 10. West Wing, NBC, 12.2/19.

NBC affiliates are becoming increasing disturbed by the continued erosion of ratings for the XFL telecasts on Saturday nights. Jack Sander, executive vice president of media operations for Belo, which owns three NBC affiliates, told the online edition of Electronic Media magazine, "Everybody is concerned about the fast decline in the ratings. ... I don't think it can work at last Saturday's [ratings] levels. Nobody would say we could live with that." In a separate interview with Broadcasting and Cable magazine, Sander said, "We need to see some improvement over the next two or three weeks or we'll have to reevaluate" the commitment to carrying the games live. Meanwhile, TNN, which had scored strong ratings with its initial XFL broadcast, saw them plummet 50 percent the second time around last Sunday.

Wednesday night's Grammy Awards show came off without incident, despite early predictions of massive demonstrations by gay activists against rap performer Eminem. Demonstrators outside Staples Center in Los Angeles reportedly numbered no more than 100, and the singer, whose performance was shunted to the end of the telecast, appeared to soften some of the lyrics that had outraged his detractors. At the end of the performance, Elton John, who sang the chorus of the song and who is openly gay, gave the rapper a hug, then lifted his arm in victory. CBS, clearly mindful of the controversy, ran two public-service spots about domestic violence during the telecast and one spot featuring Judy Shepard, mother of the gay Wyoming student Matthew Shepard who was murdered in 1998. Today's (Thursday) New York Post reported that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) requested the Shepard spot "as a means to balance out the anti-gay lyrics of Grammy performer Eminem."

NBC acknowledged Wednesday that, at the FBI's request, it sat for nearly a day on a story about the arrest of an FBI agent on spy charges. NBC News exec Bill Wheatley said that when the news organization learned of the arrest of veteran agent Robert Philip Hanssen, it contacted the FBI for confirmation. The agency, Wheatley said, confirmed the arrest but asked NBC to delay airing news of it because they were expecting Russian agents to pick up a package of documents that Hanssen had reportedly deposited. The Associated Press quoted Wheatley as saying, "They explained to us that clearly were we to go with the story at 6:30 (p.m. Monday), the chances were great that the Russians would hear about the matter and avoid picking up the package." By Tuesday morning, no one had attempted to retrieve the package and NBC went with the story on the Today show.

A number of pirate television stations are popping up in rural areas of China, selling ads to local merchants, and, in the process, challenging the official state-run China Central Television, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. In one case, it said, a pirate station in rural Henan province simply moved its location when local authorities tore down its tower. When authorities attempted to shut it down a second time, they were thwarted by hundreds of demonstrators, the newspaper said. The station reportedly sells commercials for as little as $60 a month and receives payments for broadcasting tributes to recently deceased villagers and congratulations to newlyweds.