After days of increasingly bitter public exchanges between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, it seemed the two might never head back to the negotiating table.

But behind closed doors, the two sides are apparently much more amenable to talking. After several days of back-channel discussions between leaders of both sides, the WGA and AMPTP have agreed to return to negotiations one week from today.

Whether that will result in an end to the strike, now entering its third week, remains highly doubtful, as the writers and producers remain far apart in their positions.

Both sides will be putting their key terms back on the table to start, with writers continuing to demand a larger chunk of residuals from DVD sales and a bigger slice of revenue from new media. 

TV studio executives have attempted to postpone the whole issue of new media residuals, and at the least they will come to the table with an offer below what the writers are seeking. Their argument has been that it's still too early to come to terms on new media.

As it stands now, writers get roughly $0.03 to $0.05 per home video sale. They want to double that. They get roughly 1.2 percent of new media revenues, and they want that raised to 2.5 percent.

Near term, all the money is in DVD sales. In the U.S. they are estimated to reach $17.3 billion this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, and are forecast to surpass $20 billion by 2011. But new media will be tiny for the next few years. A major piece of new media--online TV shows--is only expected to generate $600 million by 2011.

In the meantime, the WGA will continue to picket today and tomorrow, breaking for Thanksgiving later this week before returning to the lines.

The new talks were evidently prompted in part by a secret meeting hosted by Creative Artists Agency co-chairman Bryan Lourd on Friday. Attendees included Walt Disney chief executive Bob Iger and News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin, who preside over the parent companies of ABC and Fox, TV’s top-rated broadcast networks, as well as AMPTP president Nick Counter and WGA West president Patric Verrone.

Other Hollywood talent agencies have also been acting as go-betweens for the AMPTP and WGA during the first weeks of the strike, according to The Wall Street Journal, so as to speed up the stalled negotiations.

But pressure to end the strike may be building from other factions as well.

Late-night producers are itching to get their shows back on the air after two weeks of repeats and counting, and programs including “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Show with David Letterman” could return as early as next week without their writing staffs in order to avoid network-imposed layoffs of the crew.

There’s also been talk that some soap opera writers were mulling a return to work, with the networks reportedly ready to replace them with scabs as their supply of fresh daytime dramas dwindle. But there's been no confirmation.

The first effects of the strike will begin to be seen in primetime next week, when shows including NBC’s “The Office” and CBS’s “Big Bang Theory” go into repeats. Many top shows will follow by mid-December, including ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and CBS’s “Two and a Half Men.”

In other strike developments elsewhere over the weekend, cast members of “Saturday Night Live” staged their own private performance in front of a live, paying audience Manhattan, with host Michael Cera of “Superbad” and musical guest Yo La Tengo, to benefit the show’s crew members who’ve been hurt financially by the strike.

The cast of NBC’s “30 Rock” plans a similar benefit performance tonight, after Universal Media Studios informed the actors that their pay was being suspended late last week.

They join the casts of “The Office” and “Battlestar Galactica,” who will earn less than half their usual paychecks over the next five weeks if production is not restarted.

Meanwhile, Sony has totally suspended pay for the casts of Fox’s “’Til Death” and CBS’s “Rules of Engagement.”