News Corp says actors strike would be "foolhardy" (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin painted a bleak picture of the labor dispute between Hollywood studios and the Screen Actors Guild, and warned it would be a "foolhardy" time for actors to strike.

Chernin, a key player in resolving a 14-week strike by screenwriters earlier this year, said on Thursday that progress toward a new contract with television and film actors was "going badly" and studios had no plans to return to the bargaining table.

"We have now made successful deals with virtually the entire Hollywood creative community," he said at a media conference in New York. "SAG has come in and basically said: 'The deal you made with everyone else is not good enough for us.'

"We've made our final offer. We don't want to send a false message that there is room for negotiation. We're done."

Hollywood studios, including News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox, have been locked in a three-month battle over a new contract covering 120,000 union performers in prime-time TV and movies who belong to SAG.

SAG has asked its members to support authorizing a strike against studios. It needs a 75 percent majority for the vote to pass.

Chernin said the sickly economy made this a critical time for the film and television industry and a strike would be severely damaging.

"I think it's genuinely foolhardy to think this is an appropriate time to go out on strike," he said. "It would be devastating for the entire creative community for the actors to go out on strike."

The two sides are at odds over how actors should be paid for programing delivered over the Internet and whether all made-for-online productions should be subject to the union's contract.

The studios broke off talks on June 30 after they presented an offer similar to one approved by several other Hollywood unions, including the settlement that ended the screenwriters strike in February.

SAG last staged a strike over its main film and TV contract in 1980. That walkout that lasted three months.

News Corp shares were 10 cents higher at $8.65 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)