New Media has been able to operate with fewer regulations and will continue to do so under this new proposed contract.
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:
Quibi, Netflix, etc. can make episodes that are under 20 minutes in length, and by doing this, they are not obligated to follow most of our basic standard provisions including minimums and twelve hour turnaround. A regular network sitcom is 22 minutes in length and under our current contract, producers are incentivized to trim two minutes out in order to avoid our standard provisions. They can literally choose to pay you minimum wage, for multiple episodes. With more shows doing cross-boarding (shooting multiple episodes in one day) the studios can shoot as many episodes as they want in that one day as opposed to paying you per episode.
One direction in which new media is headed is in short form programming. By not addressing this in the proposed new contract, we are permitting this low standard and setting a precedent that this is acceptable. There is no overstating how important fixing this is.
It should be noted that the budget level is irrelevant. You can have a fifteen dollar budget or a fifteen million dollar budget on a ten minute show. It will still be up to the studio to determine your salary as well as other contractual provisions.
We would never allow a network, cable show, or CW show to be produced without the protections set forth in our standard contracts, so why allow this with Netflix, the industry’s largest employer?
#VoteNO #SendItBack #SAGAFTRA #DISSENTINGOPINION2020