Photo Source: Fox
Both kinds of programming would challenge the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists because new media provisions in the collective bargaining agreements weren’t established to support that type of work. Last week’s buzz about Netflix picking up the canceled Fox show “Terra Nova” is the most recent possibility of seeing a network production shift to online.
While the collective bargaining agreement doesn’t address how to handle shows moving from a network to online, both Ray Rodriguez, SAG’s deputy national executive director and head of contracts, and Joan Halpern Weise, AFTRA’s assistant national executive director of entertainment programming, say that such a transition would have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Those new agreements would have to honor whatever original contract the performer signed, which would likely reflect being compensated for prime-time network TV work.
This is new ground. The intention of early new media contracts was to cover small, experimental projects. Those were usually low-budget productions, often shorter than 30 minutes. “If we do see more high-budgeted content made for initial exhibition on new media, that will likely become a topic of discussion between the unions and the AMPTP, because the current new media side letters are not designed to address that situation,” Rodriguez said.
The side letters for new media production and reuse were first put in the collective bargaining agreement in 2001 and have been expanded over the years to reflect the growing genre. In 2008, the unions created a provision that established jurisdiction over programs made for new media and specific residual rates for programs made for traditional media that are reused on the web. The collective bargaining agreement will be renegotiated in 2014.
The AFTRA and SAG new media provisions, which are very similar, are different from provisions for network shows. Unlike with network, the contracts don’t have established minimums. Instead, minimum compensation is freely negotiated by the performers.
Weise said the unions have been trying to prepare for the long-term.
“As we learned firsthand from the music, basic cable, and news broadcasting industries, actors and other performers in digital media must first win jurisdiction, then their rates and working conditions, through the union contract,” Weise said. “What you don’t want to do is lock yourself into a position that either shuts you out of the game completely or forecloses opportunities for future growth.”
New media programming is evolving and beginning to resemble prime-time TV, as seen with “House of Cards,” the David Fincher and Kevin Spacey project being produced for Netflix and the first big-budget venture online.
Netflix outbid HBO to get “House of Cards,” and the show signed an AFTRA contract; if the show had ended up on the cable channel, it would have had to comply with the guidelines of a union contract. Weise said that expectation and understanding made it easier to reach an agreement that satisfied the union and the production company, one that incorporated the rates and terms of working provisions for network into the new media model. AFTRA was able to negotiate Exhibit A scale (equivalent to scripted network prime-time scale) for performers.
A show such as “Terra Nova” wouldn’t fit neatly into the new media provisions either. It’s not clear what a “Terra Nova” deal would look like or if the show will be picked up by Netflix or another online company. Efforts to move “One Life to Live” and “All My Children” to the web failed last fall, and producers cited challenges in meeting the contractual demands of the unions as one of many issues too difficult to overcome. All three shows are covered by AFTRA.
Weise said AFTRA will be reaching out to “Terra Nova” soon to let the creative team know it wants to be involved in the process from the beginning.
“The union would make every effort to ensure that the rates, terms, and conditions are as favorable to the performers as possible, and we’ll keep them involved and informed about the negotiations, if we get to that point,” Weise said.
