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FILM INDUSTRY NEWS FLASH
PLEASE READ
It’s Not New Media – It’s NOW Media
Dear Screen
Actors Guild Member, AND OTHERS
I want to tell
you why your national negotiating committee has not accepted the June 30 offer
put across the table by the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers
(AMPTP.) For one reason and one reason only: It’s not a good offer. It doesn’t
address enough of your priorities (as outlined in past SAG Contract 2008
Reports), particularly in new media.
The AMPTP ‘s
current offer to SAG, which is nearly the same for new media as the deals that
the DGA, WGA and AFTRA accepted, has come to be called “the template.” Some of
you may be wondering why we don’t just agree to the template established by the
other unions.
The template
doesn’t protect actors, and while we may be the last union to come to the table,
we still have the obligation to address the issues that are most important to
you. We have had the extra time to effectively assess the impact of rapid
technological and marketplace changes, and after careful analysis, we don’t
believe the template works for SAG members.
In the six months
since the Directors Guild of America reached a deal with the AMPTP, the
landscape in digital media has dramatically shifted. The seven global
conglomerates that own the motion picture studios and television networks are so
confident in digital media prospects, that they are putting up huge dollars to
fast track their technology deals.
The DGA and WGA
represent writers and directors, not actors. Their resolution of the new media
issues may work for them, but they don’t address your specific needs. The DGA
and WGA agreed to allow producers to make new media productions entirely
non-union, at the producers’ option, for projects below budgets of $15,000 per
minute (effectively, almost all new media productions for the foreseeable
future.)
Most union
directors and writers don’t have to worry about large non-union pools of trained
and talented competitors, but union actors do. Non-union principal and
background actors already compete for your jobs, especially outside of New York
and California. It makes no sense for SAG to agree to allow the studios and
networks to exacerbate our problem by giving them a pass to produce entirely
non-union under a SAG union contract. We are a union, and our mission and
obligation to all of our members nationwide is to promote union jobs.
Another example
of how the new media template negatively impacts actors is its effect on
residuals. The AMPTP’s recent offer to SAG doesn’t include residuals for
programs made for new media and streamed again on ad-supported new media
platforms. So a program originally made for ABC.com could be available for
re-viewing on ABC.com, or any other ad-supported Internet outlet, as often as
possible and forever with no residuals, no matter how much money is generated or
how many times it is shown. (There is one minor exception if a program is
made for and re-run on a pay platform like iTunes and the budget is more than
$25,000 per minute.)
Just as we have
shown we can work successfully with low-budget filmmakers, we are flexible and
can accommodate fledgling new media productions under SAG contracts. We have
offered to base made-for new media residuals on a percentage of revenue with no
fixed obligation. If there is no money generated, no residuals are paid. But
if revenue is generated from programs available over time, actors should receive
residual payments. So far, management’s negotiators have rejected SAG’s
reasonable solution, while management’s proposal could mean the beginning of the
end of residuals.
What some among
our employers – the major global media conglomerates -- insist on terming “new
media” it’s really “now media.” It is urgent, instant and immediate.
That’s why achieving a fair compensation formula now, in all forms of media, and
confirming jurisdiction from the first dollar of the production budget, are core
objectives of the SAG national negotiating committee. [Click here to downlink
the full version of our “Now Media” white paper including the index of recent
new media entertainment developments.]
Your national
negotiating committee takes its responsibility very seriously. We want to make a
deal as soon as possible, but we don’t want to make a deal that hurts actors.
No deal is better than a bad deal that allows non-union productions by our
employers and snuffs out residuals for projects made for and rerun on new media
platforms. We don’t need to experiment on the backs of actors. Our real world
and practical experience has taught us how to provide union benefits and
protections in low budget productions.
Management’s
resistance is frustrating but we have to be patient. The stakes are too high to
concede jurisdiction and residuals for programs made for new media. That future
is now and, if we ignore it, it will pass actors by and this generation and
future generations of actors will never recover.
Thank you for
your understanding and your solidarity.
Doug Allen
National
Executive Director and Chief Negotiator
P.S. For anyone
who thinks that is a hypothetical and distant future, this is what the business
magazine Forbes said in a June 2008 article about YouTube:
“The vast
majority of YouTube’s library is…babies laughing and dogs splashing in wading
pools… Pricing for display advertising next to user-generated content has
collapsed. Rates on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube have fallen 45%
since February (’08), to 18 cents per thousand page views, according to digital
analytics outfit PubMatic. Most of the momentum now, says Chris B. Allen,
director of video innovation at media buyer Starcom is for ads within full
episodes run on the TV network sites,
such as NBC and Fox’s Hulu, ABC.c
Click here to download the full text of our
white paper “It’s Not New Media – It’s NOW Media.” And to see an index of
significant events and deals in entertainment media technology since January
2008, when the DGA-AMPTP deal tried to set “the template.” The index shows a
sizable increase in technology investments, new deals, unique platforms and
dramatic market forces at work.
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