Meanwhile, Back At Commercials … Rate Schedules
Since things are a little slow right now, it’s a good time to satisfy the green-eyeshade types with some numbers. Specifically, the new rate schedules that the AAAA Production Services department has calculated under the new SAG-AFTRA 2009 Commercials contract. These are the tables that JPC signatories will be referring to in paying performers in commercials. Right-click to download.
- 2009 Radio Recorded Commercials Contract Rate Chart (updated)
- 2009 Radio Wildspot Tables (updated)
- 2009 TV Wildspot Unit Values
- 2009 TV Wildspot Tables (updated)
- 2009 TV Cable Network Unit Values
- 2009 TV Commercials Contract – Main Rates (updated)
- 2009 TV Commercials Contract – Miscellaneous Rates
- 2009 TV Miscellaneous Extras Rates (updated)
- 2009 TV Local Cable Rates
- 2009 TV Spanish Language Wildspot Unit Values
One look at these will make obvious why compensation for Product Integration will not be a simple thing to bring about.
SAG commercials are dead right now. Non-union commercials are far more commonplace and one thing you will see at a lot of the audtions for them are AFTRA members. These actors will show up at a non-union audition with “AFTRA” displayed prominently on their resumes without shame. I saw it when I was non-union auditioning for commercials, and I hear it is even more commonplace now. I suppose these actors have the power to just say when they are hired that they have to make the project union just for them. Yeah right.
There is no power in a large, merged union if everyone just works off the card.
A large reason for this dropoff in union commercials? Product Integration, where companies get advertising without having to pay actors. How convenient.
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Mod. Comment: You’ll see a lot of SAG members at some of those auditions too.
Admin. Comment – More anonymous nonsense. If you had any hint of this actually happening, you could bring the member up on charges. You haven’t of course…
And blaming the falloff on product integration? Get real. Think about the 2000 Commercials Strike and what THAT did.
Matthew…how do you know that the “AFTRA” members aren’t in both SAG & AFTRA?
I do know that in NY you don’t see alot of it…however, i have a friend in LA who said they are shocked and ashamed of the amount of actors this person knows that do non union ESPECIALLY Voice Work on commercials…
I think it’s more a Hollywood actor thing than a certain union.
What Matthew says is true. The newly minted AFTRA members are going to non union commercial auditions all the time. The “AFTRA only” actors are totally undermining SAG, and dual card members that follow the rules, in commercials. This is a new trend that started with the rapid increase of new AFTRA members, over the last year.
Its unheard of for SAG, members in Hollywood, to work non-union or audition for non-union commercials.
BTW, I got my information on this trend from an agents and his client, whom unfortunately recently went fi-core with SAG, because of the lack of SAG or union commercials. He sees the “AFTRA only” members all the time. Its a VERY serious problem.
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Admin. Comment – We hear this kind of nonsense all the time. If anyone had the slightest hint that there were any truth in this stuff, the persons doing it would be up on charges in a heartbeat. But because there hasn’t been any truth to it, no one has been brought up on this kind of charge in either union.
You heard it from “an agents” ??? Right.
Sorry, but i heard it from a vetran SAG/AFTRA member who knew of friends who were both SAG and AFTRA in California doing non union stuff ESPECIALLY Voice work as of a couple of years ago…
don’t start with same old AFTRA/Monster crap, Mike…because it’s a lie…it’s a certain type of SAG member who would sell their mother to get a gig.
Marisa
Admin. says
“We hear this kind of nonsense all the time”
Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I was strictly speaking about new aftra members that have not yet joined SAG. I had never heard of this(AFTRA members working non-union in the area of commercials) until recently.
According to Marissa, its not nonsense, she says some of the worst offenders are union members that do “Voice work”.
Nothing new. “Mother Nature” told me about what she called, “the alternate talent pool” a dozen years ago. SAG LA voiceovers taking non-union work. And I know I’ve posted the story of LA jingle singers flying to Asia for a buyout on a major car package – that was 1979. Nothing new, there are always scabs.
There is nothing in our contracts that prohibit a SAG or AFTRA member from auditioning at a non-union project, commerical or otherwise. What’s prohibited is taking a non-union job.
I know some smart union actors who have done this…gone on the non-union audition, got offered the job, and then pointed out the advantages and costs (often the same or less they were offering the non-union people) and convinced the producers to make the project union.
The percetnage of non-union commericals drastically went up because of the 2000 Commericals stike, which gained little for our members. During that walk-out producer found ways to go non-union and never went back…..product intergration is only a small factor in changing the commerical production numbers. Another factor in the increase is the rise in local cable stations that are not signatories, and web commercials.
Mike and Matthew need to get some facts checked before they stir up the members on inaccuracies.
I have 2 clients, members of both SAG and AFTRA, who do go on non-union auditions. Neither has yet to take a non-union job. They are both known, and valued, well-enough that in 3 instances (2 v/o, 1 OC), in the last year alone they were able to get the job to go union. Signatories are rather easy to deal with when approached properly…
As a manager, I see both sides of this issue. With the huge flow of work to non-union since 2000, many clients and friends have seriously contemplated fi-core, as the need to pay bills has overridden the need to be “pure”.
And I’ve seen this ad nauseum over my entire 29 years as a manager, so blaming the current trend towards “product integration” is just so much unsubstantiated hooey…exactly what we’ve come to expect from the 2 post-ers who made the claim.
Where do you guys get these numbers?
I suggest that before you shoot out that “percentage of non-union commericals drastically went up because of the 2000 Commericals strike” that you contact the SAG statistic office, ask for the Commercial Earnings Report and read that for yourself. If there was such a vast penetration of Non-Union work wouldn’t we see a commensurate decrease in the income to the union? We aren’t seeing that. We have seen a decrease in the percentage increase when adjusted for inflation but not so much to determine that non-union work has skyrocketed.
The brilliance of the boogeyman of “non-union” proliferation is that it assigns blame to whomever chooses to use the “data” while at the same time the “data” is impossible to ascertain.
When asked if there was any way to assess the amount of damage or number of non-union spots, the lead statistician for SAG said, unequivocally, “no.”
It was agreed by all involved, SAG & AFTRA & Staff during the w&w and the negotiations that, absent facts there is a vacuum. Since the staff can only work with facts, they won’t entertain guesses and hypothesis. So, anything shouted into the vacuum can easily become fact.
“What do we do about the 30% penetration of non-union work?!?!?” was asked, loudly, at a joint board meeting. This was asked by a member of the negotiating team, (an alternate) who was based in and representing NY.
We in the LA team would have LOVED to get verification of this data, but, when he was approached he had none. He had speculation and hearsay but no hard data.
Since this boogeyman approach can only serve to create tension in a negotiating room, weakening the team, a few of us asked Staff if they would call casting directors in NY & LA and ask them a series of standardized questions designed to get an idea of what kind of problem non-union work truly represents.
When this approach was presented to staff they agreed that it would be easier for them to sign off on that information in lieu of any real facts (which are, as I said, impossible to ascertain).
What we learned was there was a decided difference between the experiences in NY & LA. With NY weighing very heavily toward speculation that non-union was a problem and LA being less so.
The real affect of this protocol was to remove a specious and speculative argument from the debate. That worked. That argument was left out of the equation.
No one knows how much work there is that is non-union. It is impossible to track.
What I find curious is that there are more spots being shot today than there were pre-2000. In fact, pre-strike there seemed to be more commercial work in Los Angeles than in NY.
As of last year it is almost equal. Of the work in those cities, it is roughly 55-45% LA- NY. With the branches filling out the rest of the 30,000 jobs. In effect, work has, since the strike of 2000, come BACK to NY.
Interestingly as well, while 18,000 performers account for those jobs in LA, only 6000 performances are accounted for in NY.
Meaning in NY, there are 1/3 the number of commercial actors doing only 10% less work than their LA counterparts. Which means that NY commercial actors, through SAG’s numbers (AFTRA is much more difficult to get numbers from. They aren’t difficult, they just don’t have the staffing) make $14,000 per performance MORE than the LA actors.
Just FYI. If we really taught them how to do non-union, we would see a significant dip in our income from that. Instead of the 797 million dollars in income in 2007.
If anyone can bring hard data about the number of non-union spots that air, that are taking work away from union actors, the commercials contract standing committee would love to see it.
Please. We only have 1.5 more years before we go back to work.
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Admin. Comment -Alan, you’re confusing income with number of union and/or non union commercials. They’re not the same.
Sp, what is the number of non union commercials that are produced and/or aired? How are they impacting our work?
The number of union produced and aired commercials are still up. They have been rising or remaining steady since the strike. The amount of work that has come back to NY has increased since the strike.
We heard this a lot, especially from actors in NY. They were and are concerned that there are so many non union productions but no one can tell us how many. So it just becomes a boogie man.
There have always been non-union jobs. There always will be. And it will always be impossible to track them. So, its very easy to say, “The strike caused an increase in Non-union work!” because there is NO way to verify it.
What I am asking for, what we were asking for, what we need, is proof. Proof that the number of non-union jobs is so pervasive that it has cut in to our ability to make a living.
We need to either get that data or stop using it as a scare or negotiation tactic because there is no way to back it up.
The bigger problem with non-union work occurs in the voice over community and this is not a problem indigenous to just LA. NY and the branches experience a plethora of union talent working off the card.
(Of course there is just as much proof of this as there is of non-union jobs taking union jobs away on camera: very little. But we can’t accept one as truth and the other as not in this case.)
This is something that is happening nationwide, not just in LA. In fact, LA produces more session work than NY per year (The data comes from AFTRA). And, more importantly, 99% of that work that LA does is paid at the higher “L.A. Scale” rate. (data also from AFTRA) Why would producers hire LA actors at a higher pay rate than NY? That is an entirely separate discussions. The bottom line of that argument is: NY VO MUST get together (actors and agents) and demand the LA Scale.
When they succeed a few things will happen:
Work will flow back to NY a bit, so LA will lose a bit. And those who don’t want to pay the NY/LA Scale will send more work to the branches. Non-union actors will see that, while they make $100 a pop, their union brethren make more than 4X that amount AND get benefits.
But, with the union wage in the big market like NY being just 267 (or thereabouts) there is little incentive.
Raise the rates. Come up to LA’s scale. Then the real issue will just be Fi-Core people and that’s a different discussion.