LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19 — On the picket lines, striking television and film writers adamantly claim that studios are refusing to pay for the use of writers’ scripts on the Internet.
But ABC Studios is doing just that. Over the next three months fans of the hit show “Lost” can go to ABC.com to view weekly episodes of “Lost: Missing Pieces,” a series of new two- to three-minute shorts that reveal background information and previously undisclosed details about the stranded inhabitants of the show’s mysterious island.
The “Missing Pieces” episodes were produced under an agreement with the writers’ union that provides for much of what the writers say the studios have been refusing to offer.
Payment for the use of material on the Internet will be a central issue keeping the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers apart when they head back to the bargaining table on Monday.
But as the “Lost” example shows, the two sides have found common ground before, and both have shown interest in giving some ground on the issue.
The “Missing Pieces” episodes were written by Carlton Cuse, an executive producer of the series and one of its lead writers. They feature the show’s regular actors and characters, including Matthew Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shephard. Mr. Fox appears in the first installment, released last week. The writers, actors and others involved in the production were paid specifically for their work on the Web episodes and will earn residual income, just as they do for the broadcast show.
In an interview Mr. Cuse said that while it took five months to reach an agreement, he believes the “Missing Pieces” deal could serve as a template for resolving at least some of the dispute over payment for online use of material.
“I think it is a pretty good model,” he said last week. “What it shows is that there is basically room for a partnership between writers and the studios in a new medium. It’s where I wish we were headed instead of being stuck in this standoff.”
People close to the studios say they also see some promise in the “Lost” deal, although they note that it was negotiated with a single producers’ alliance member, ABC Studios, rather than with all of the members of the group. The deal also included a clause specifically stating that it did not set a precedent for any future deals and could not be cited as such in future negotiations.
Nevertheless, the television and film studios offered terms similar to the “Lost” deal in the negotiations that took place before writers began their strike on Nov. 5, said Barbara Brogliatti, a spokeswoman for the alliance.
Charles B. Slocum, assistant executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, said in an interview on Friday that he believed “in general terms” that the “Lost” deal created “the pattern that we are looking for in our negotiations,” although he noted that the guild was seeking better financial terms.
“Lost: Missing Pieces” paid the writers of each short episode approximately $800. For that the studio received the right to run the episodes on Verizon cellphones for 13 weeks. After that period, repeats of the episodes or their transmissions on other media — like the Internet — would generate residuals for the writers of 1.2 percent to 2 percent of the fee the studio received to license the material.
Therefore, the episodes now running on ABC.com, each preceded by an advertisement, are generating for Mr. Cuse a 2 percent residual. In its contract negotiations, the Writers Guild is seeking 2.5 percent for similar work in the future.
The “Lost” deal represents, for the writers, a significant improvement over similar situations elsewhere. On NBC.com, for example, fans of “The Office” can find episodes of “The Accountants,” a series of shorts made for the Internet, scripted by writers of “The Office” and featuring regular actors from the show. A short commercial usually accompanies episodes.
But writers of the “The Accountants” received no specific payment for their work and receive no residuals from their continued play. Writers from “The Office,” including Greg Daniels, an executive producer, have objected to that and refused to work on further shorts without a separate agreement.
There is some dispute over exactly what writers want in such agreements, however. Representatives of the studios, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said writers were asking to be paid a percentage of the retail price of movies and television episodes downloaded over services like iTunes, and a percentage of the advertising revenues generated when movies or television shows or mini-episodes — like those from “The Office” and “Lost” — are streamed online.
To the studios that is like the manufacturer of a product’s being asked to pay its workers based on the retail price of what it makes, something the manufacturer has no control over.
Mr. Slocum disputes that, however, saying that the guild is only seeking to be paid a portion of the wholesale price of downloaded content, and a portion of the licensing fee that the studios receive for streamed content. In other words, Mr. Slocum says that the writers are seeking what the studios have said, in principal, that they are willing to pay.
The two sides don’t agree on when payments should begin. The studios want a six-week window in which they can replay full episodes of a television series without paying extra. The time is necessary, they say, to “promote” the series, allowing viewers who missed a show’s regular broadcast to catch up. The writers have said they would accept a much shorter window, of about three days.
Another sticking point remains in how licensing fees are measured. Because ABC Studios, which produces “Lost,” is owned by the same company that owns the ABC television network, which operates ABC.com, the Writers Guild questions whether the licensing fee being paid from one related party to another is being negotiated fairly.
The guild argues that the best indicator of what is a fair licensing fee is how much advertising revenue the Web site can earn selling ads for the Internet content. The studios object to advertising revenue being brought into the equation at all.
With the two parties seeming to agree in principle that there can be a way for studios to pay writers when their scripts are used for Internet content, the studios and the writers would seem to have already established some sort of foundation for a settlement.
Perhaps that recognition helped push the two sides to agree to return to the bargaining table in a week. As Mr. Cuse said of “The Missing Pieces” episodes, “It’s ironic that these are coming out and flourishing when this is the crux of the issue in our strike.”
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/arts/television/20digi.html?_r=4&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
