After working the overnight shift last night and getting, not nearly enough sleep this morning, I drug my delirious self out of bed and skateboarded to CBS Television Studios to attend the SAG Rally. I always hope to see more of my peers on the front lines, but sadly I usually don’t. I think the main reason is, and I’ll go out on a limb here, that most actors aren’t aware how these contract negotiations really affect their bottom line. Trust me when I say that this “acting thing”, as in making a living from it, is being seriously threatened by the studios.
One of the many goals of the studios is to end residuals or at least curtail them a great deal. If we, as actors, lose residuals we lose a major way of funding our pension & health plan. As a 12-year member of SAG with 11 years of pension credits earned that is not good news.
Many of the studios are airing their reruns online. Currently, they are not paying residuals for those reruns. Mostly, those reruns have commercial breaks in which leads me to believe that they are selling advertising. At the same time reruns on broadcast television are becoming less and less frequent. This is a serious issue for actors.
So, in the end, it was a slightly depressing outing, but I felt great about attending. After all SAG has done a lot for me and I need to do what I can to give a bit back.
1 comment:
As a matter of fact, Hulu and the other websites that are streaming reruns online are indeed running ads. They are making money. A lot of money. They have even said that Hulu is doing better than they had first projected.
And no one is getting residuals based on the revenue the producers are making.
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