As posted here:
Online television is creating new opportunities for the makers of television programs, creating new competition for broadcast networks and other content providers. Among the latest is Amazon Studios, the program development division of Amazon.com, which has announced that it is expanding into episodic comedies and children’s shows for prime time.
Independent TV writers and producers have been invited to upload series proposals that will be reviewed by the Amazon Studios team and, potentially, added to the company’s development slate. The best series will be distributed online via Amazon Instant Video.
Is this an actual threat? At the figures mentioned in the above article, the budgets surely are non-union all the way — not just actors, but everyone involved in a production. The buzz we’ve seen in the writer/director/producer community suggests that most consider Amazon’s terms pretty awful.
But this is something all the creative guilds must keep an eye on.
Betcha if there’s anything really good there it gets sold to “real” TV by Amazon, and Amazon keeps the lion’s share of the money for doing so.
Now let’s not get “radical” and insist on a fair deal in new media, cause that’s not going to be an issue for years and years and it is not worth striking over.
You people are pathetic. Seriously. This decision in 2008, was like, “is the sky blue?”
In 2008. And now. Without a strike, there will be no fair new media deal, which HAS to be a percentage of profit. THAT can be negotiated. Negotiating forward from “no minimums and free windows leading to the end of residuals” is a complete and utter disaster for actors.
It will require a strike. It is EVERYTHING. We MUST have reasonable control over WHAT, HOW, WHEN we get paid. We should NOT have given away clip consent and product placement protections. (let alone force majeure), MAJOR MISTAKE to allow the “floating around” of our work, our images, in the black hole world of the net. We COULDN’T get a deal to protect that? Bullshit. We HAD to get a deal to protect that. Rosenberg was EXACTLY right. But, we threw that way.
The possibility the A-list will support a walkout, which let’s face it, THIS “union” will NEVER support, is over. SAG, could compel them whether they liked it or not.
SAG-AFTRA? Forget it. It is a money-making business, off members dues fees attached to members money and it covers up [deleted].
I’m wrong? I’m being a downer? Be an adult and face the future. We HAD control over our profession via SAG, and our contracts pre-UFS. We no longer do. Watch.
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Ed. Comment: This aimless ranting completely misses the point. Amazon is not part of the AMPTP. No strike in 2008 or 2009 would have had the slightest effect on what Amazon is doing. Nor would any terms present or absent in the 2009 or 2011 New Media sideletters. Amazon is not a party to those.
This is a problem of organizing. Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook — any non-signatory entity that decides to get into the original content business is faced with the choice of whether to go union or non-union. It’s a much broader question than simply acting talent. Will a writer (presumably not already a WGA member) be willing to work on Amazon’s terms, without the protection (such as separated rights) of the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement? This work presumably will move them no closer to WGA membership eligibility, so is it worth it? Especially since Amazon takes control of the finished product, and even offers the ability for other users to modify it and create “mashups” of the product.
The real question is whether this kind of production is viable enough to matter. That’s what SAG-AFTRA and the other creative guilds must monitor.
Of course it’s the point.
“Organizing?”
You’re being serious, right? “Organizing” was NEVER a strong suit of the “union” we just merged with, and “organizing” anything that will then fall under the new media contractual provisions STILL requires a percentage of profit deal, that can be negotiated forward from.
We don’t have that. We have a “no minimums and free windows leading to the end of residuals” deal. Thanks to AFTRA and of course, UFS. We can’t make that better. It is, structurally, un-better-able-making. Duh.
No amount of twisting and turning and making excuses and citing the percentage of the vote to merge, is going to change those FACTS.
And THIS doesn’t even address the other problems (problems? MASSIVE problems) of the AFTRA-centric disaster we just became, from the democratic, ground-up, centralized power, use your A-list leverage if you need to to get what you want (the ONLY real weapon) power we WERE, as SAG.
And eventually, when we “organize” as aggressively as YOU predict (a joke) – we will HAVE to “organize” everything under a fair deal.
And we’ll have to strike to get it.
Again, “being a downer? This was historic!” (It sure was…) The ONLY thing you people have going for you is, you SEEM to think, eventually, 160k instead of 120k will mean ANYTHING to the AMPTP when, not IF, but when, they do what they do. Say “uh, no.”
What will you do then? Say “but HEY! that’s not FAIR! We have… 40 thousand more PEOPLE. doesn’t that COUNT?” And the
AMPTP?
They will say “why would you EVER have thought 40 thousand more people would count for ANYTHING when you ask for a fair deal in new media, or the return of clip consent, or product placement protections, or force majeure? The ONLY thing that mattered in 2008, is the ONLY thing that matters now – what are you going to DO about it when we say ‘NO’, big bad SAG-AFTRA?”
And we all know what the answer to that is. Cave. Just insert AFTRA, and, go from there.
No? Explain to me how we avoid that. Please try to be specific, non-evasive, and coherent. Make some real world predictions about this “organizing” and shedding this disaster new media deal we have, and not allowing our images and content to be floating around, making other people money, but us, zip, cause we gave away our rights to our own images, and the non-union rise that is, inevitably coming because there is no shot, legally to enforce Rule One in a union that allows non-unionism in, THE SAME UNION.
Please. Predict, explain. Make sense.
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Ed. Comment: You first.
And that’s why these negotiations that are coming up in 2014 are important. The two studies that the DGA did for their own negotiations which they offered to us in 2008 said that there wouldn’t be any money or any way to know where the money would be going until then. The Allens’ rejected the studies. But it looks pretty clear to me that 2014 is it.
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Ed. Comment: The question, though, is whether Amazon will even come to the table.
Nah, you miss the point. It’s on YOU now. YOUR responsibility. You, the merger site, the players, the big thinkers – it’s YOUR turn to explain and deliver.
So, what ARE you going to do when they say “we (AMPTP) couldn’t care less you have 160k instead of 120k. The answer is “no.”
We MADE our predictions. YOU took control with a bunch of rhetoric, and now you want US to figure it out.
Come on – you better do MUCH better than that or this SAG-AFTRA thing might just not work out. Know what I mean?.
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Ed. Comment: Evidently you have resigned from the union.
Oh and, the “DGA” studies? Have ZIP to do with the reality for actors. Residuals are the LIFE BLOOD of screen actors.
But, that was apparently a point lost on people with real influence into the merger who were not and never had been – screen actors. Kind of a handicap, when the big picture was discussed.
Directors have no more insight into the new media landscape than we do, and ANY “study” that is more than… 6 months old, tops? Is meaningless. The monetization is changing every day, is already here, and inevitable.
It will ALL be new media on a series of SCREENS soon enough. In some places it already is. In many places. And in terms of how the COMING consumer consumes? Its EVERYWHERE.
The kids? The future? Our gravy train? They are WAY ahead of OUR “negotiating” reality, which is, simply put: we are dead in the water, right now. We need BIG change and that will take a strike, or the threat of one. Just as in 2008.
The ONLY thing that mattered in 2008, OR in 2014, is – does SAG-AFTRA get a percentage deal that can be established as a reasonable template to work forward from?
And the answer is:
“If it is willing to endure a possibly long hard strike to get it, because that is what it would have taken in 2008, and having capitulated to a no minimum free window leading to no residuals deal in 2008 as the template, that is DEFINITELY what it is going to take in 2014.
So, forget the DGA “study.” Forget what the WGA is doing, forget ALL that.
ACTORS rely on residuals to STAY ALIVE. DIRECTORS AND WRITERS GET CONSIDERABLY BETTER (IN TERMS OF MINIMUMS), UP FRONT FEES. THEY LOVE THEM SOME RESIDUALS TOO (I KNOW) BUT, THE ACTOR MUST BE COMPENSATED WHEN HIS OR HER CONTENT IS USED TO MAKE SOMEONE ELSE MONEY ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, 24/7/365.
So, again, how you gonna pull that off without a strike in 2014?
And if you don’t, what kind of profession do you think will be left.
I think we all know the answer to that.
Easy to bitch. Really, really hard to lead, aint it?
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Ed. Comment: Why do you care, since you are no longer part of the union?
Amazon has created an affiliated production company, called The People’s Production Company, that is signatory to both the WGA MBA and the Animation Guild’s contract. So, at least in terms of writers (both live-action and animation), they’re already at the table, and have agreed to the same terms the AMPTP Companies agreed to.
That suggests that if they ever get into a position where they need to employ actors, directors, etc, they’ll become signatory to the appropriate union contracts.
I have to agree with the Admin’s statement that this is an organizing issue. While SAG and AFTRA’s new media contracts allow union actors to work in new media, the time has passed when we should be calling this “new media” and should accept the fact that online entertainment is here and is a viable, profitable medium. Because anyone can produce and distribute online content, however, protecting the performers who work in it has to involve more than just putting together a new contract… it has to involve educating performers on their rights, what they should be expecting, AND the business model these producers are using to make their projects profitable. That way the performers are empowered to know what to ask for… and what to walk away from when it’s not offered.
I also agree with the Admin’s statement. It’s about organizing. AND, if Amazon wants to bring more eyes to their product at some point they’re going to reach out to recognizable actors – who are union – and offer a union deal.
BTW, is it just me, or does anyone else here find ‘Aspect’ sounds an awful lot like Matt Mulhern?
And because it is about organizing, since we are all in one union we will be able to hold all of our people out until they do come to the table, if it gets to that. Aspect’s rants do sound amazingly like Mulhern. Neither makes sense and they both make my head hurt.
Of course it’s Mulhern. He posts the same crap everywhere. I’m curious as to what admin means when admin states that he is “no longer part of the union.”
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Ed Comment: Simply an observation that anyone who consistently uses “you” rather than “we” when referring to what the union must do is no longer part of that union.
That is Matt writing. He wants a strike so badly he can’t even see that we don’t have a contract with Amazon. Who are you going to strike against Matt??
I agree that “New Media” is no longer new anything and our next major concern should be developing a system for fair compensation of product that will be used on multiple platforms.
That won’t be easy because the first thing we have to do is identify who we will need to negotiate with.
Kathy Joosten
I hope they pick up AWAKE. It is a fantastic show.
why bother trying to educate the uneducatable (is that a word?)?
He’ll never get it. He’s too stewed in his own juices (ingredients of the “juices” : 2 part bile, 3 parts anger and resentment).
Onward, guys. We have a fresh new future ahead and together we can structure a strong negotiation with producers that will not be foolish, embarrassing and unsuccessful as was the train wreck created by the old guard.