United Hollywood just posted the following from WGA member Laeta Kalogridis. (It fleshes out what I reported last night, The Operative Word Tuesday Is "Haggle"):
Here's the proposal that the WGA is bringing to the room as I understand it (got this from someone on the Board):
A TIERED PAY SCALE based on the number of times something is viewed via streaming.
The AMPTP did not make an offer on downloads or (EST) Electronic Sell Through. That’s supposed to come today. Let's hope it does.
As for streaming, our proposal is X bucks a year for X number of streams. And starting very reasonably for a low number of streams. Every time the number of views reaches a certain threshold, the compensation bumps up into the next tier.
It's a simple and fair idea – as with a traditional residual structure, there is a basic payment for the right to use content on the internet. And, as the work is used more and more, different tiers of compensation kick in - as the companies make more, the content creator makes more. All we ask is that if the content is a huge hit, our compensation scales upward accordingly. The company and the content creators share in the success.
We are willing and able to negotiate on what those X numbers should be. We welcome the AMPTP cooling its hostile rhetoric, and we see no reason why cool-headed discussion can't make this system work.
This? This is solid, concrete good news. Now both sides just need to sit down and negotiate. A deal can be won quickly, and a good one on top of that. All they need to do is try. All I want for Christmas is a fair end to the strike…
Comment by Anonymous — December 4, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
As a working writer I think this is solid. The good news, in response to “captain obvious’” concerns, is that the companies are only shady (or are most shady) when it comes to their income and accounting. This way, we don’t have to worry about how much they make. We have a series of flat fees, which would kick in, like residuals…when you reached a new plateau. FYI, after the second run, residuals (at least in cable) are paid for groups of runs (i.e. 2 thru 6) the residual or this run is triggered when and episode plays a second time. Rather than wait for the sixth run (and inevitably get screwed) the network essentially buys the next few runs with their residual. I reckon the same would be true with the internet. And there are countless Softwaregeeks and adtracking companies devoted to tracking those precious clicks exactly. And we’d get paid without concern with how the studios cooked their books.
fingers crossed.
Comment by kidscableguy — December 4, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
Nikki,
I want to make out with you!
PLEASE through the grace of God give us good news tonight.
A fan.
Comment by DL — December 4, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
Haggle. HAGGLE!
Comment by e — December 4, 2007 @ 1:18 pm
I hope for Nikki’s sake DL is hot!
Thanks Nikki — post strike, you’re gonna be your own mini-trade, we ain’t leaving!
Comment by anonrighter — December 4, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Off subject a bit –
For all your techno-geezers trolling this site, how ’bout coming up w technology where you don’t have to refresh every 30 seconds? If I can get email, why can’t I get Nikki’s new info w/out refreshing? Maybe we should save this for the next strike — hah!
Comment by anonrighter — December 4, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Let’s all be careful. The conglomerates strategy I’d to get hopes up and then dash them. Divide and conquer.
With their manipulation, always assume the worst and maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.
Comment by zapp — December 4, 2007 @ 1:30 pm
“And starting very reasonably for a low number of streams.”
This worries me, only because it seems that the WGA keeps coming out with reasonable numbers and the AMPTP views that as the place to negotiate down from.
Two different negotiating tactics; I won’t say that one is wrong but if one side views the other from their point of view we end up with a Three’s Company grade misunderstanding.
Comment by Jerad — December 4, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
For those of you that want technology where you don’t have to refresh every 30 seconds, there is none that I know of. However, the next best thing is Firefox which has an auto-refresh feature and is the best friend of Woot.com members whenever there is a woot-off.
As for the talks, what the WGA is presenting is pretty fair and if the AMPTP were willing to haggle, both sides would be having a news conference to announce the new deal tomorrow at this time and all of late night would start coming back on Thursday.
Comment by Jessy S. — December 4, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
“Off subject a bit –
For all your techno-geezers trolling this site, how ’bout coming up w technology where you don’t have to refresh every 30 seconds? If I can get email, why can’t I get Nikki’s new info w/out refreshing? Maybe we should save this for the next strike — hah!”
Can someone teach this guy about RSS?
Comment by anotherWGAmember — December 4, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
This worries me, only because it seems that the WGA keeps coming out with reasonable numbers and the AMPTP views that as the place to negotiate down from.
This would seem to be an error on the WGA strategists side. Isn’t starting high and meeting in the middle haggling 101? Any merchant in Tijajuana knows this. You always start high so you can get something close to what you want.
Comment by Freelance worker bee — December 4, 2007 @ 2:10 pm
X bucks for X number of streams? How are writers going to have time to write when they are so busy setting up bots to stream all their own material over and over?
Comment by tenpercenter — December 4, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
One would think that a TV Writer would know about something named “Really Simple Syndication”. Perhaps it’s the “Simple” part that is his problem…
Note the blue line at the bottom of the page, just above the “Leave a comment” line. The one that says “RSS feed for comments on this post.” Click on it and see what happens. If that isn’t self explanatory, call the local Community College and ask.
Comment by Dave — December 4, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
Finally we have gotten past the draconion rhetoric and into a serious conversation about numbers.
It’s just about settling on numbers. We are no longer being asked to pretend that the internet isn’t a new business model. That’s terrific.
I would say thank the Lourd, but someone is bound to say it’s not his doing. Fine, let’s give credit to everyone…
It doesn’t matter what brought us to this point as much as it matters that we all move forward like reasonable people who want to be in the business of making drama and comedy (filmed) as opposed to making drama and comedy in the driveways of studios and networks.
Comment by WGA Writer With Business Sense — December 4, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
The key to accounting is an accurate count. And from what I have read, the biggest fudgers in counters are various online services attempting to get their revenue streams up via clickcount.
Somehow I think the counters/clicks would be undercounted if left in a certain someone’s hands. There needs to be an indepenent method of tracking.
But I do like the tier approach.
pb, who uses his toes to count big numbers.
Comment by pb — December 4, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
the ONLY issue I could see with a ‘per stream’ model is someone could stream a film 100 times without refreshing the page and most ad revenues at the moment are from page ads outside of the actual video.
It would probably be easiest to ask for a percent of the ad money from the video pages, take the total page views for each show and divvy it up according to who’s show is shown the most. (ie. if you write and episode of ‘The Office’ and your show accounts for 20% of all page views, you get 20% of the money allocated for web residuals)
a per stream model is too similar to traditional TV and those rules don’t apply to the internet. Some sites auto reload videos once you are done until you hit stop and some nefarious types could sit there and let a video loop all day. (of course, one could write some code to auto refresh a page to up page views, but that would be easily trackable by IP number hits)
Oh and the guy who wants the page to auto refresh; it’s absolutely possible with Java calls (the Breakdowns uses it) but if a blog used it I would be obliged to launch a DOS attack against it for being annoying. Click on the RSS feed link and look into using reader.google.com it is your new friend. Plus it lets you avoid visiting the actual pages sometimes. Sucks for the site owners ad revenue, but good for us.
Comment by soon to be unemployed asst — December 4, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
We’re all in this together, yes, but MANY of us are going to vote no on any contract that does not include a change in the Dvd formula. I could easily see this coming to a vote of the membership at the end of the year, and, in a close vote, the contract being disapproved because of the Dvd issue. Where would that leave us?
Comment by Pepper — December 4, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
anon,
As has been commented here, such technology exists, however this site doesn’t implement it. Along with RSS, the major technology for page updates without refreshes is called AJAX. It allows the page to retrieve individual pieces of data without refreshing the whole thing. Think Gmail, it uses AJAX extensively, and its why new email will show up in the browser window without you having to refresh.
Comment by Techie — December 4, 2007 @ 5:25 pm
I have a problem with “Techie” and what he said.
(1) This site does implement RSS.
(2) “Along with RSS”… and then Techie goes into recommending an esoteric implementation which is embedded internal to Internet Explorer since IE4 and as an example recommends an e-mail client which doesn’t run on Macintoshes and is not “Open Source.”
This is part of the problem with the Internet. People try to assign their answers to “my” problems without ever asking me what my problem is.
For Instance. Everybody here is worried about streaming movies to websites for free. The examples you use are utube. Now utube is, at best, a four inch patch of color at 640×480 resolution.
I don’t want to watch that. And I damn sure won’t watch a commercial at the same time. And my 54″ OLD TV looks really bad @ 640×480.
But I do own about 1500 DVDs because I can’t get local TV up here in the mountains, and I refuse to pay the satellite companies who “Stole my Sky”.
(1) So, learn to use RSS.
(2) Watch the DVD stuff, (because there is no click-tnrough fraud” involved.
(3) Fix the Accounting Problems.
Comment by Dave — December 5, 2007 @ 12:41 am