AFTRA Waits For The Moment
AFTRA finally did what they have been itching to do/announced they were doing/were pressured into not doing all along… they severed – though they maintain they suspend, not terminate – their decades old relationship with SAG. They are now free to negotiate the deal that will undercut SAG that they wanted to make with AMPTP all along, as they try to take over a larger and larger piece of the SAG pie.
I covered this all over a month ago in a Hot Button column which got a collective yawn from Hot Blog commenters (except for one, who takes AFTRA’s side in all of this) and the only surprise in last night’s news is that it took so long. Clearly, AFTRA has learned a little about doing the controversial thing you wanted to do, but waiting for a moment in which you could blame the “other side” for forcing your hand.
But the real story is not about SAG and AFTRA here… it is whether this drama is going to create a SAG strike that might otherwise have not happened. The scenario is simple… AFTRA does a deal with AMPTP in the next month that undercuts SAG. Like the DGA deal – though I think DGA did a lot better than AFTRA will and started with more honorable intent – it will be filled with “progress,” most of which was already won by WGA and DGA. But that will be the AMPTP argument. In order to keep growing the cable segment, they need these givebacks… in order to grow online, they need these givebacks, etc, etc, yadda yadda yadda.
Meanwhile, SAG will, for the first time in a serious way, have to confront the issue of crossover actors between the two unions. AFTRA was find it nearly impossible to continue to encroach on cable, etc, without their members who are also in SAG… just as runaway production was not an option unless SAG allowed The Canadian Rules to stand without any fighting back.
Given the now very short window – which you have to give some credit to Clooney/Hanks for recognizing – fighting on multiple fronts and making a deal that the most aggressive SAG members are happy with is going to be quite a challenge… especially with former SAG leadership still sniping from the sidelines.
Now Alan Rosenberg will need to not only bring together the internal SAG constituencies to agree to a contract that reflects WGA & DGA, but there will be another contract out there, designed to steal more work from SAG members who want their hard won residual and P&W dollars. (And is the Qualified Voting debate still bubbling somewhere at full heat?)
Going into this week, I would have put the SAG Strike possibility at about 10% – 15%. The AFTRA news, I am afraid, roughly doubles those odds.
Meanwhile… we are about to pass the “won’t start a movie if we don’t know whether the talent will walk mid-shoot” deadline as well (though some have already pull the brakes on).
Oy.
And just where did you get this news from last?
C’mon, be fair…
I honestly didn’t know you still did Hot Button columns!
It went so long without being updated, that I took it off my home page. If it’s a regular schedule again, I’ll put it back..
I think Whatnokiss has tipped her hand more than usual.
I got the news from the wire service report I linked, What.
It’s not like I have been shy about linking to Crazy Nikki in the past. And if she runs anything smart or important, I will link again. Right now, she is selling the micro, as usual, with no sense of the macro. The soap opera stuff is just bullshit and I won’t run it.
People are beginning, thanks to Ms. Clinton, to remember how much the micro-stories mean nothing and they want to think about the real news. Unfortunately, Nikki got so much attention for micro-ing the WGA story, while I (sorry for this onanism) was the only journalist in town to get the story right from the start to the end by keeping an eye on the big picture and the realistic motives (even when smart and admired insiders disagreed with me in private channels) and not just the endless name-calling and overdramatizations, that journalists looking for the kind of attention Nikki got are still chasing those dumb lies like, “it’s about the soap opera.” I won’t do it. Period. It has nothing to do with Nikki. It’s just bad journalism, whoever is doing it.
People like Nikki just want the drama so they can print more “private” e-mails sent in as press releases. I just want the real story and real answers.
I honestly haven’t done many lately, THX.
There will be some new structuring of Hot Button to revive the title in the weeks to come. Notices will be posted here on the blog.
Well … let’s take look at the issue a little more closely shall we?
On Sunday morning, Dave said “…the only surprise in last night’s news is that it took so long.”
So “last night’s” news – was Saturday night’s news – and THAT NEWS was on Nikki’s site … on Saturday night!!!
(Now surely you guys totally already KNOW that Dave goes to that site every five minutes … or else he wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on her and then make an idiot of himself with his cute little Nikkiderisions.)
So check the link Dave says HE got “LAST NIGHTS” news from … WHY does it have the posting date of SUNDAY MORNING??? if it was Saturday night’s news???
“Sun Mar 30, 7:33 AM ET”
The story in Dave’s phoney “link” says absolutely NOTHING about anything occurring on Saturday night … so we KNOW he wasn’t paraphrasing the “Sunday morning” story (as he tends to do with all stories so often).
So again, just how did Dave know the news was from Saturday night?
Dave knew because he got the “Saturday night’s news”, from the ONLY reprting source who actually had the news posted on the web, ON Saturday night! And that was Nikki.
Nikki Rules!
(Dave cheats.)
And you other posters are all kissups.
And it’s so funny to watch how your only comeback comments are like … “this has to be Nikki”! Can’t you think of any other possibility?
Are you so limited in your understanding of anything that isn’t PurePolandLover like you little munchkins, that you can’t possibly imagine of anyone else but Nikki being WhatNoKiss?
C’mon…THINK!!! There HAVE to be other options beside Nikki! (It all makes me want to start giving you little hamsters some clues…)
I’m getting jealous that you always give her the credit for my tirades!
Snivel, snivel …
Go for it! that’s it!!!
THAT’S a clue!!!
You’re president of the Nikki fan club, the Finklub.
I am completely flummoxed by this post. AFTRA is driving things? Really?
No, I completely get it. AFTRA’s brilliant plan included tricking NED Doug Allen into writing a six page article on how all things AFTRA are wrong. AFTRA has cleverly manipulated SAG West into disenfranchising SAG East and hinterland boards. AFTRA surreptitiously sent an spy from “Bold & The Beautiful” to strong arm a meeting with the top two members of SAG (with apparently oodles of time on their schedule) where the possibility of SAG taking over jurisdiction of the show.
To quote Monty Python: “those clever, clever bastards!”
Do you know the history of these two unions? There is a very different approach by each guild as to how to most successfully organize shows. Did you know that there is currently only one AFTRA show not shot in the United States? By keeping those shows local, how many American actors got work and got paid that wouldn’t have if the show shot in, say, Canada?
And before you go dismissing the poaching aspect, “B&B” is only the public example being used. There are other shows (not being discussed publicly). AFTRA asked SAG to sign an agreement not to poach shows and SAG declined, even though a “no poaching” clause exists in the AFL-CIO contract both unions signed. Oh, and hey, what was the only union to oppose AFTRA’s joining of the AFL-CIO? SAG.
I do agree this raises the possibility of a SAG strike. I think your percentages are low. I see it more likely to happen now than not.
Before I end this rather long post, I throw this scenario out. AMPTP makes a deal with AFTRA that is an slight improvement on WGA/DGA deals, then turns around and refuses to give that deal to SAG. Indeed, AMPTP can grant AFTRA jurisdiction to new media and deny it to SAG.
Nikki Finke is not a legitimate journalist and has never attempted to be one. Her breathless coverage of the WGA strike was marked by her constant interest in embarassing the power players in the industry. Many people commonly misunderstood this to mean that she was pro-WGA, when in fact she has always been pro-herself and anti-AMPTP as well as any particular celebrity she happens to dislike during a given week.
She is clearly trying to fan the flames of the current situation, in the hope that she can see another industry shutdown and more weeks of vitriol and nastiness being thrown back and forth.
For those of us who actually work in the business, it’s not an idea we’d encourage. The working actors and background artists who I’ve worked with over the past 3 weeks have unanimously told me that they don’t wish or intend to go through another strike. Further, they agree with the petition drive regarding the limitation of guild votes to those members who actually have a recent history of gainful employment as a SAG member.
The current situation only tells us that the SAG leadership is in a major crisis. The heads of AFTRA are clearly trying to distance themselves from Rosenberg and Allen.
I don’t know that this action makes a SAG strike more likely. I’ve always thought they would rattle sabers as long and loud as possible. But they are quite aware of the spectre of the WGA going out for 4 months to wind up with a contract that was only slightly better than one they could have gotten had they waited for the DGA early negotiations rather than trying to stop them.
Nikki Finke is NOT a legitimate journalist … and has never attempted to be one. Very true! BUT!
NIKKI FINKE IS A VERY LEGITIMATE “REPORTER” … and has greatly succeeded at being the best “reporter” in the business of Hollywood.
There’s a difference between “journalists” and “reporters”. (Try not to confuse those two occupations, and you won’t get so angry about her ‘reportings’.)
The attention she attracts as a reporter (for good or for bad) AND the readership she receives as a reporter (for good or for bad) proves that as a reporter … Nikki Rules!
And you guessed wrong JeffyMCM, but that’s OK.
You’ve never been able to get it correctly. (But just in case you want to try again, I left you three more clues.)
I don’t care for guessing games. If you want to be taken seriously, just tell us who you are. Why not? Otherwise we really have no reason but to make wild assumptions.
So: what’s the difference between a journalist and a reporter, beyond the semantic?
Jeffy?
Why did you ask what the difference is? Did you change your little brain and decide to take me seriously now?
You can be such a contradiction sometimes! OK, I’ll bite.
As a JOURNALIST … to do your job is to “journal a story” and to keep track of, and keep accurately organized, all of the “reported parts” involved in the story (and to wait and watch it closely) to create a cohesive, verified, linear journal of the the entire story. And that requires waiting for some (or all) the information to be “reported” by other reporters first … so that as a journalist, you can stitch it all together into the “journaled” story.)
A REPORTER (on the other hand) doesn’t wait to create a journal of the story … they just “report” any of the parts of the story AS FAST and AS SOON as any part of the story is discovered, or uncovered, or “reported” to them.
The best reporters find or receive the immediate parts of the story long before anybody else does.
Journalists (like Poland) track those parts FROM the reporters as they come in and compile them into a journal that they can publicize.
The journalist can oft times be more accurate with their hindsight, but the journalists are always way behind the reporter in publicizing any of the the parts involved in the story. So journalists like Poland always criticize reporters for not being journalized enough … but journalists like Poland can never be first to any part of the story. Some of us need the important parts immediately … rather than waiting for journals.
REPORTERS come first, and journalist come last. (But reporters come way more often.:)
So never mistake a journalist like Poland, for a reporter like Nikki – unless you don’t mind waiting all day for him to finally get to the climax. I guess Jeffmcm doesn’t mind waiting for Poland to climax.
You asked – I answered. Happy now? … or changing your mind again … and not taking me seriously?
(So fickle you little boys can be!)
I am far from the biggest David Poland worshipper on this site.
Who are you?
No disrespect, DP – I like you a lot. But I’m sure you’ll agree that I’m not a bootlicker, as your friend suggests.
And never mistake Nikki for anything more than a gossip who is fed information because she will run it without really knowing what it means.
I wouldn’t mind Nikki so much if she knew what she was really talking about. But she doesn’t. Every time Nikki does anything live, she embarrasses herself (and all of us) by making factual errors and making them insistently.
Nikki gets all the bigwigs over her transom… and she has no skill whatsoever in figuring out what it means… quite the opposite of me. I have no obsession about being all “toldja.” I just have an interest in getting it right. And Nikki is wrong a lot of the time. She was wrong on WGA. She still doesn’t understand how wrong she was on the Disney/Pooh thing. She suckles her sources as though they were truthtellers and not manipulators.
Simple… she’s a gossip and a liar. And worse, she is a gossip who thinks she is more than that. She certainly has the skills to be a great reporter/journalist/blogger/whatever. But her self-loathing and desperation for positive attention handicaps her and makes her a dangerously bad influence on this business.