Hollywood Writer's To Return To Work As Early As Wednesday

Hollywood writer's could return to work as early as Wednesday after meetings on both US coasts yesterday unveiled the details of a tentative agreement reached by the WGA and the studios was deemed a success by the writer's and Michael Winship, president of the WGA East.

"I believe it is a good deal. I am going to be recommending this deal to our membership," Michael Winship told reporters before the New York meeting.

The three year deal is not official yet however, as a by-mail voting process will take about 2 weeks before it may or may not be officially ratified. But the WGA board will meet today to decide if they should authorize a two-day vote of Guild members to see if the strike order should be lifted. That would mean that writer's may return to work as early as Wednesday.

The tentative deal means that writer's will be better compensated for their work in a number of areas, but compensation for streamed and downloaded content from the internet lay at the heart of the strike from day one, and a new residual payment stipulation in the contract for new media is a step forward for writer's if not exactly what they wanted.

The three year deal, good until May 1, 2011, stipulates that writer's will receive a flat fee for ad-supported internet streaming for the first 2 years of the contract up to a maximum of $1200 for a one-hour network primetime show streamed from the internet, and 2% of the distributor's gross receipts in the third year. With the value of the distributor's gross set at $40000 per 26 week period, writer's can expect to receive $1600 in the third year from a one hour program. Troublesome to writer's though, is that the first 17 days of an episodes availability on the web is considered "promotional" and writer's will not be compensated for this time. It seems reasonable that the majority of network primetime episode downloads would occur in the first 17 days of availability, so whether or not this is really a win for writer's remains to be seen.

For episode downloads, writer's will be paid residuals of 1.2% of distributor's gross receipts for limited time downloads and 0.36% for the first 100, 000 dowloads of a television program and 50, 000 downloads of a feature film, after which residuals will be upped to 0.7% and 0.65% of distributor's gross receipts for TV programs and feature films respectively. This numbers will apply to permanent usage of the downloads.

Another interesting portion of the contract involves content that is written exclusively for new media usage. What is interesting about is not so much the payment agreement but the costs necessary to be spent on production in order to be compensated at all. For writer's to actually be compensated for made-for-new-media content, production should cost at least $15, 000 per minute, $300, 000 per program, or $500, 000 per series order in order to be covered. NewTeeVee, a top new media blog, did a survey of new media producers that resulted in an average number generated of $1000 per finished minute being the typical price of production for a good web series. They also pointed out that Prom Queen, a web series created by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, costs about $3000 for a 90 second episode. That would mean that the writer's of one of the most popular web series out there right now wouldn't even be eligible for compensation for their work.

Also of interest is a report released by comScore last week that reported a record number of online video views in December 2007. 10 billion internet videos were viewed in the United States during the month of December, the most US video views in a month ever, and very likely thanks to the limited television viewing options resulting from the Writer's Strike. Well this number looks promising for new media writer's, it's important to point out that a whopping 32.6% of the 10 billion views were from Google Sites, with 97% of Google Site views being from YouTube, a video platform epitomizing short, amateur video rather than professionally created web TV. The average video view was about 2.8 minutes in December meaning that some new trends have to develop in the world of online video viewing before the new contract really benefits writer's. Those trends being a emigration of viewers to professional content from amateur content and either a desire on the part of viewers to increase their average video viewing time or a move on the part of producers to ramp up the cost of production for their web video projects in order to be eligible for residual compensation.

February 10, 2008

Hollywood Writer's To Return To Work As Early As Wednesday