In a story on network advertising spending, which included details of NBC’s new line-up without mention of why NBC announced it officially prematurely on Sunday afternoon, the New York Times’ Bill Carter and Brian Stetler confirmed the fears of many of the SAG members who didn’t want to settle the strike…
(V)iewers, however, who will see more new shows in general as the networks reduce the in-season repeats that now carry almost no value.
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
I understand why they want to put more product out there. It makes sense in terms of keeping the cycle perpetually going and never stopping it outside of the Winter holidays, but that’s not exactly good for TV. Sure, there might be one really good show out of all of this PRODUCT but there’s not going to be a LOST in there, and that’s a really big freaking problem from my couch.
Also, a question, do these put upon SAG actors get anything from cable rerurns, or did they get screwed on that deal as well?
See, this is where you lose me. At the end of the day the networks are putting more money into the same-sized SAG pool.
That means more opportunities for developing craft, more opportunities for breakout roles, and most importantly more money in SAG bank accounts at the end of the year.
Given that networks’ margins are dropping fast, with revenue streams like DVD falling and everyone still scratching their heads trying to work out how to make streaming profitable, you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that this scenario is “confirming the fears” of SAG members.
Foamy: It kind of depends on how much work you’re getting in the first place, right? If you’re a successful actor, working as many weeks of the year as you reasonably can, suddenly your annual income just plummeted, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
On the other hand, if you’re struggling to break in, only getting very occasional jobs, then sure: the increased demand for work is going to work in your favor. Instead of working 5 weeks out of the year, you’re working 10. Great.
But if you’re already working 50 weeks, you can’t very well bump that up to 80 to compensate. The household budget has to get cut.
And that sucks, no matter how lucky you are to be working in the first place.
The market for actors is one in which the supply of willing labor vastly exceeds the demand. I’m not in the industry but I’d think that an actor working 50 weeks a year is already doing far, far better than the average, no?
This is a market where the capital, i.e. the producers, has almost all the leverage over the labor, i.e. the actors. The labor’s best hope for a fair share of profits is strong and smart union representation. Did the actors’ union fail to foresee the shifts in the industry toward streaming? That’s a shame. Get a better union.
This will be an interesting development for NBC since Law & Order reruns seemed to be comprising their entire Saturday night lineup and various gaps in their programming during the rest of the week.
To Foamy’s point about the upside for SAG, networks aren’t in the business of throwing a lot of money at scripted shows, so at the first sign of trouble with this plan, you can bet your butt the reality show studios will be seeing a lot more orders post haste.
I’d be fairly stunned if there’s any actors working 50 weeks for networks – especially middleclass actors who pop in for an episode or two per series. As Eric points out, the supply of actors vastly outnumbers the hours of product being created.
The concept of “profit sharing” from streaming is fairly dubious currently. I know some execs have talked it up in the past as being “dipping your balls in gold” (I think was the phrase I read), but to my knowledge the economics of it has proven… less than the networks anticipated. Youtube has yet to post profitability after 4 years of acquisition by Google (famously, it was once reported as losing $1million per day), and while Hulu recently announced profitability its revenues were in the region of $100mil last year. For comparison, NBC reported revenues of $2billion last quarter – 800 times more than Hulu – and given the massive amount of content available on Hulu, that results in fairly paltry cuts for suppliers. Meanwhile competitors Joost and Veoh have pretty much fallen over completely.
Dr Horrible is often cited as an example of streaming success, but it was made on a budget of $250k – and that was with no-one getting paid, since Joss talked everyone in to working for free upfront. Despite topping the iTunes charts, the revenues were less that a comparable show on broadcast networks, and after splitting the money with cast and crew there was a reasonable (but small) profit left over. This is a model to which the guilds themselves would never agree, and one that’s far too risky for producers to adopt wholescale.
It’s still going to take several years and much more investment for streaming to become a legit revenue stream, especially if the “massive successes” are barely comparable to basic established programming. I know the guilds want to get in on the ground floor after the 80s VHS escapades, but doing so only discourages investment – which may prove more costly in the long-term than giving up points on residuals to encourage growth. As far as I’m aware, none of the guilds have looked at the net present value economics – and if they have, they’ve certainly kept quiet about it.
I get grouchy with guild politics because I don’t think the adversarial stances that the industry as a whole has adopted as the de facto way of business helps anyone in the long-term. I’m fairly firmly of the belief that sometimes its better to get a bigger slice while sometimes its better to get a bigger pie, and knowing when to switch between the two strategies is the best way of benefiting your guild members rather than blindly following one to the exclusion of the other.
To Hallick – I’m guessing that the networks will be quicker on the trigger finger to pull shows in general, either to order one of the other pilots as a midseason replacement or bring in reality shows instead. It’s likely there’s going to be plenty of tears when the firing line warms up.
Still, the current pilot spending spree is the only reasonable scenario where SAG bank accounts get more money – networks aren’t going to arbitrarily up payments at a time of falling margins, and the alternatives revolve around cutting new scripted programming.
But if you’re already working 50 weeks, you can’t very well bump that up to 80 to compensate. The household budget has to get cut.
If you’re an actor working 50 hours a week (a relatively small number) then by DP’s numbers you’ve got an annual salary of $350,000. I would find it really hard to get upset if these actors start whining that they’re *only* making this much when there are so many other struggling actors out there.
Krazy: I’m not really saying you should get upset. My comment was a response to Foamy saying, “You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that this scenario is ‘confirming the fears’ of SAG members.” But indeed, those actors working to capacity (whether that’s 50 hours or not) probably do have fears over this change.
My 50 hours, by the way, was admittedly an exaggeration. I should have said “to capacity,” but then I would have had to explain what I meant. An actor working 5 weeks and holding a second job for 45 more falls into the same category. Now that person is making less overall income but still doing the same amount of work.
Now maybe such a person will still come out ahead: maybe he’ll get a few extra weeks of acting work, which would replace a few weeks at the second job. If the acting pays more (and/or is more personally rewarding, as presumably it would be), then great.
But even then it’s not hard to see why this change might “confirm the fears” of these SAG members. Even if it ultimately works out okay for them, “You’re gonna be paid less, but you might get more work to compensate” is a scary thing for anybody in any industry to hear.
Again, I’m not arguing that this change is bad for the union overall, only that it’s easy to see why it’s scary. And possibly actually bad for some.
Hallick has a good thought, though. This change doesn’t necessarily mean that SAG is going to get more work overall. The networks are already talking about swallowing a significant increase to their production budgets. The temptation to fill the extra time with cheap reality shows is going to be pretty strong.
if you guys could see what reality projects are being passed on this year, you’d understand why the networks are going back to scripted. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that even with four or five writers working on each reality project they’re still boring.
movielocke: I hope you’re right, and that we’ll see a real return to scripted television. What makes me dubious is that, because reality shows are so much cheaper to produce, they don’t need to clear as high a ratings threshold to be profitable. A boring reality show with mediocre ratings just might reap greater financial returns than the expensive drama everyone loves.