VERRONE NEW WGA, WEST, PRESIDENT.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

Newly elected Writers Guild of America, west, President Patric M. Verrone spent his first day in office Wednesday taking calls from supporters, attending meetings and making plans.

``We see this as a new day for the WGA,'' said Verrone, elected this week in one of the highest turnouts ever for a guild election. ``We feel really encouraged and pleased by the fact that the members have supported us with such big numbers.''

Verrone, whose credits include ``Futurama,'' ``The Critic,'' and ``The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' received a decisive 68 percent of the 2,012 valid ballots cast. The rest of his Writers United slate won their seats by a roughly 2-to-1 margin.

``Our intention is to rebuild the leverage of the guild, particularly on collective bargaining,'' Verrone said. ``The industry had been moving away from us.''

The biggest priority: increasing the size and power of the union. Verrone said he wants to ramp up the guild's effort to incorporate reality show creative talent into the WGA as well as writers for animation, games, independent films and nonfiction programming.

A lingering sore spot for WGA members and other creative unions was this year's contract negotiations, which did not include a new formula for DVD residuals even though studios and television networks derive more income from DVDs than ever before.

``We have a very good 20th century guild in a 21st century industry,'' said newly elected board member Phil Alden Robinson. ``The companies in the last five-10 years have changed the way they do business, the way they make their money and produce and distribute their product.''

Robinson, the writer and director of ``Field of Dreams'' and ``Freedom Song,'' said the WGA has to change, too.

``It's time we pull ourselves into the 21st century and adapt ourselves to a new way of working,'' he said.

Verrone said his platform of organizing the creative community to better bargain with media companies especially resonated with WGA members.

He wants to create a better relationship with Writers Guild, east, as well as coordinate future contract bargaining strategies with the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Directors Guild of America.

``The companies all sit at the table together and bargain against us one at a time,'' he said. ``We need to develop strategies that turn the tables on that.

The Writers United group used grass-roots organizing techniques to connect with the membership during the campaign. This involved a system of using team captains who were responsible for personally contacting at least 10 voters each. They also managed to accumulate nearly 500 endorsements of writers along the way, including those of several past WGA, west, presidents.

Verrone said he plans to run the guild in the same way that he ran the campaign, with one of the elements being a membership communication system so each member ``will be one step away from a board member at all times.''

``We ran the campaign the way we intend to run the union,'' Verrone said. ``It vindicated our theory, which is when you engage the membership in the discussion, they respond, and the issues they are concerned about are the ones that we now have to address.''

Elected with Verrone for two-year terms were David N. Weiss as vice president and Elias Davis as secretary-treasurer.

``What we were offering was a new way of looking at things,'' said Davis, a writer for such shows as ``Frasier,'' ``M*A*S*H,'' and ``The Mary Tyler Moore Show. ``My personal opinion is that these are difficult times for unions in America, difficult times for writers as a group to make progress in being justly and rightly compensated for our work and to achieve the kind of creative rights we want to achieve.''

In addition to Robinson, also elected to board seats as part of the Writers United slate were Scott Frank, Robert King, Peter Lefcourt, Joan Meyerson, Howard A. Rodman, Tom Schulman, and Dan Wilcox.

Greg Hernandez, [phone]

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com

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- Patric Verrone

President, West Writers Guild of America