VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Mike Harrison]

A producer client has said that an increasing number of his clients (end-users) are wanting to put their local cable TV spots on the internet and has asked how that will affect my pricing for the VO. This is a first-time question for me, and I don't know how to answer. Any other non-union talent been posed this question, or have internet rates already in place? The thing to consider is that once on the internet, the spots are - in effect - no longer 'local' spots.

[anthonyVO]

Whatever your session fee is, multiply it by 3-5 and you have a one-year buyout. OR, multiply it by 7-9 and you have a full buyout and forget about it.

The issue of something not being "local" because it's on the web has been debated back and forth between producers and talent (or their guilds) so for the time being don't expect to get a "national" rate if you will for web use.

Hope that helps... some. And congrats on the gig/lead.

PEACE.
-Anthony

EDIT: One more thing - that's if the spot was made for broadcast AND they're going to use it online as well. If the spot is SPECIFICALLY made for web ONLY, then it's whatever you can get - just don't sell yourself short.

[Dan-O]

At an AFTRA seminar, recently, a paymaster was discussing the future of web related fees. His prediction was a talent would receive a session fee and a pay-per-click residual. Say you agree to a penny a view. If it's a a small website that gets very little traffic, then you make a buck for a hundred people viewing it. But, say you get sent to YouTube and it's the next internet marketing sensation with over five million views?

[ccpetersen]

[Jowillie]

We need to decide on this subject. This year, we have been asked by several small newspapers to "partner" our cable assets with them. They offered a small percentage of what they will earn. Newspapers are apparently desperately seeking alternative means of revenue.
My reply was, "Why would I want to do that when I could do my own video replay site?"
Look for many big papers to launch audio and video websites very soon. We all want some of that action. Hey, isn't that what the Writer's Guild strike is all about?

[ccpetersen]

If the papers/cable companies had to buy that material from content providers or produce it themselves, they'd have to pay "market rates" for it. Your content should be treated the same, which will depend on the market they're reaching, etc. I mean, you (meaning you the producer, cable company, whatever) had serious fixed costs in producing it, and those should be amortized by the rates you get paid from someone else who didn't produce it but wants to use it. It can get sticky.

Vis-a-vis the original discussion here about internet-based rates, I went back and looked at the SAG/AFTRA rates for industrial/educational and any additional usage (which is largely what I had to deal with in the past) and the Internet use option is a "five years use" option; the fee is 33 percent of the session fee within 90 days of session and 50 percent of session fee thereafter. I bet that one will get looked at pretty hard in the negotiations for the updated contracts in the next year or so (no, I'm not a SAG/AFTRA negotiator).

How content is to be handled is an interesting question. The project that is beta-testing one of my productions online is offering a percentage of click-throughs as income. I don't have the whole "click-through stream" in front of me, but it runs something like this: the amalgamator (the guy who picked up our content for his channel) gets 30 percent of click-through revenues. From that, he pays us a percentage of the click-throughs that were done while our content was playing (there are ads that show up during the presentation, superimposed over one corner of our content). It works out to a few cents per view at the top end and maybe a fraction of a cent at the bottom end.

To be honest, I don't think that there's enough information yet about viewership and click-throughs and viability to make really good guesses as to where it'll all go over the life of a typical SAG/AFTRA contract period. And, then for those who are not union, how does this translate? All good questions and a lot of talking about it left to do.

cc
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Charter Member: Threadjackers Local 420

[anthonyVO]

[ccpetersen]