Battlestar Galactica 'Webisodes' Conflict Brewing

nebaz writes "MSNBC has an article saying that there is tension between NBC and Ron Moore and team about the royalties on the 'Webisodes' of Battlestar Galactica. The episodes have been seized by NBC, balking at Ron Moore's refusal to produce any more episodes, due to compensation issues."

Simple solution

Send in 6 to negotiate. That cylon seems to get her way most of the time, for some reason.

Re:Simple solution

Gee, I wonder why. Could it be the legs? The lips? She's no 6, she's an 11 for sure.

True, she's not a 6...but....

She's no 7 (of 9) either.

Re:True, she's not a 6...but....

Yourself?

Uh....

This is an industry-wide battle between creatives and network/studio execs that goes way beyond this one show. Most of the unions [wga.org] completely messed up years ago negotiating residuals for the home markets (VHS and DVDs especially), so there's a LOT of resistence to giving away the farm this time. (Many writers, for example, in movie animation get zero [latimes.com] residuals.) Unfortunately, there's a lot of momentum and precedents that resulted from the previous mistakes, so it's kind of an uphill battle for the writers, directors, actors guilds. The future gets even more complicated when writers, actors, and other artists work directly for the Internet, for phones, for games, etc. and when "reality" shows claim to not have writers at all or won't allow their writers to organize [wga.org]. Plus there's the issue of residuals for older content that wasn't even imagined when the shows were produced in the first place.

So yeah, it's a mess, and there's gonna be conflict in this arena for a while.

Re:Uh....

What is wrong with TV executives? Most TV writing is appallingly bad - and they pick a fight with the best writer they've got? (And since it sounds like NBC is in the wrong anyway.)

Re:Uh....

Agreed - it's all about driving a wedge between what the writers (and others) get, and what they - the studios - keep [worldinprogress.org], a gap that will get substantially wider as the net takes off as a distribution channel.

free witing, but nbc owns it?

NBC Universal, the studio behind "Battlestar," refused to pay residuals or credit the writers of these "Webisodes," claiming they're promotional materials.

not pay writers? sheet. if these people worked for nbc, would nbc not pay them for the time during their work day they wrote?

"you get no pay, peon, that was your break!"

see how they feel if you lift the webisodes an puth them on your own site.

Re:free witing, but nbc owns it?

Right now NBC Universal is in the process of doing a lot of quirky things. I heard just today they're scaling back production of their "8-9pm dramas" to make room for more game a reality-type shows because they are cheaper to produce. NBC Universal is rumored to be about to lay off 700 people as a result of dropping profits and what not. Personally, I think it's a crock of crap and is just the studio making a cash grab and trying to screw the creative types out of their money. It's been a historical theme that business people will always try to screw creative people.... however the creative types today are a lot smarter than they used to be. It should be interesting to see how it shapes out. With all of the on-demand and downloadable styles of content, I think it's prudent to make sure these businesses remain viable - but screwing the artists isn't the way to do it.

Re:free witing, but nbc owns it?

> not pay writers? sheet. if these people worked for nbc, would nbc not pay them for the time during their work day they wrote?

Nobody said that they weren't paid at all. The article just says that they don't get paid residuals, which are extra payments, above and beyond what they are initially paid for their work, that writers (among other professions) get paid when their material is aired again, whether as a regular rerun during the season, during a marathon, or in syndication.

There are some good debatable issues here. When the show is broascast on television as a rerun, that is obviously a second airing, which generates residuals. But when is the "second airing" for a downloadable episode?

If one million people download an episode over the course of one week, should that count as one million "airings", or seven (one per day), or just one (for the week)?

If residuals are to be based on how long an episode is available for download, will that cause networks to remove episodes after a week, because to keep it up longer would trigger more payments to the writers (et al.)?

davidh

Re:free witing, but nbc owns it?

One of the other issues is that revenue is not a standard term. If it were then you could negotiate that you garner a specific percentage of that revenue.

The problem is that no one will do gross. That is reasonable - there are many places where a real gross is really really high and the real net is zero or a loss. Take advertising for instance - pretty much all a loss (and this is where the OP is talking about). While it is purely a cost, it still increases net revenue by quite a bit.

If you do net then the studios play with costs - every thing becomes one and non-solid costs are greatly inflated. Say, for instance, one could say the five minutes by the studio exec to read over a document and sign it cost the company 5 million, to be deducted from the gross (and since it grossed 4 million that is a loss). Therefore you get no money. This occurs quite often.

If the studios were somewhat honest this wouldn't be such an issue. You could simply do a percentage of net income (or maybe even gross income). However the powers that be try and actively screw people out of money and are in a position to do so easily. Do all of them do it? I do not know - I suspect there are honest players out there who figure a happy well compensated employee makes you MUCH more than a screwed one (which is very true). However from my view it seems pretty much all the big players do not do this - including trying hard line DRM initiatives that screw customers (read - the RIAA and MPAA).

Eh, this is what a union is for. I've seen many cases where unions demand unreasonable ideas (it has resulted in more than one company moving labor out of country). Yet, this is precisely what they are intended to fix. If nearly everyone decides to do this there is no choice, if enough choose to go around the union then maybe it isn't that harsh on you and you need to re-evaluate your complaints. That's a free market for you.

Beyond Jericho?

I wonder if this is related or similar to what happened to the Jericho webisodes...there was one, corresponding to the pilot, but now the CBS website has been re-worked to remove all references to it.

Pay them

As I recall, actors were not initially paid for VHS sales because they were not covered in the contract...

These things are clearly more than commericals and the actors should be paid. Heck, even actors in commericals get paid.

[BLEEP]

Frak!

-CR

Pfff

I give Baltar 1 hour before he caves in and the situation is "resolved."

Maybe since there is a new medium?

I know some people must have seen this comming, but you'd think they'd act before this became such a big issue. As time goes on, I am sure some new method of distributing stuff or new forms of media will eventually cause this problem again. If they didn't think of this being a problem all those years ago, what lies down the road in 10, 20 years time?

Please don't fuck this up NBC

Whatever BSG's writers want, give it to them. They're far better than the writers on nearly every other one of your shows, and is one of the highlights of a network this is otherwise deservedly in last place among the big four.

from someone in the biz

I write music for some of these shows and let me tell you, you have no idea how deep the well goes. Most of us get ZERO royalties per download off of shows on itunes. ASCAP/BMI refuses to track them on the internet. Thus, as the viewing audience shifts, they are trying to squeeze us out. It's amazing really.

Re:from someone in the biz

Wait, if that's true (I note that you posted as an AC...), I just had a horrible thought. We have DRM on the iTunes episodes because we are told that this stops pirating, so people pay for the episode instead. The networks tell us this is a good thing, because it means more money to pay for more shows = more content for us. But now we are being told that the money doesn't go back to the creative talent, ie presumably it goes into the oversized pockets of company execs/shareholders. Come again?!?!

Please note, I am one of the rare /.ers that actually believes DRM to be a reasonable idea. I write software for a living, and don't like the idea that others can just take my products that I have worked hard on without me getting anything in return. I even do DRM for a living just at the moment! But still, DRM is ONLY justifiable if the money made means more content (better content!) is produced.

Re:from someone in the biz

But now we are being told that the money doesn't go back to the creative talent, ie presumably it goes into the oversized pockets of company execs/shareholders.

Quite so. See also Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org], which caused movies like Forest Gump to officially have no net profit (and thus screwing over the writer of the orginal book, as his contract specified that he gets a percentage of the profit).

The real pirates are in movie and music stuido board rooms.

Re:

I believe his point was that you shouldn't be "amazed" at their attempt to squeeze you out. That sort of thing is business as usual for any large corporation.

Tomorrow, on MSNBC

Marc Graboff, West Coast president of NBC Universal TV, was torn in half by a conflicted Victoria's Secret model.

Watchmen

DC Comics pulled a similar stunt on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons with Watchmen badges ("pins" to the American audience). The badges were sold in comic stores and used the iconic designs that Moore had envisioned and Gibbons had illustrated. DC Comics happily cashed the proceeds but did not send any of the profits to Moore and Gibbons since these were "promotional items." Alan Moore did not react well to this....

Re:Watchmen

That was sleazy. If the item is intended to be purchased by the person getting the item, it's definitely not a promotional item, or at least in my opinion, it shouldn't be. That's one of the kind of things I am not surprised to read about with regards to the comic book industry.

It may be "promotional," but...

Seems to me as much creative energy went into creating those webisodes as did the full TV episodes (albeit 3 minutes at a time). It's not like the webisodes are just clips of scenes from other episodes all strung together into a 30 second commercial... they are all unique content, things you can't get from just watching TV episodes.

I wonder if the actors got paid for the time they spent shooting those "promotions." Or makeup, costume, cameramen, the list goes on.

Re:It may be "promotional," but...

I'm sure that everyone got paid for the time they put in, just like anyone else with a normal job. This boils down to residuals, or a share of the profits from distribution. Imagine that you are a programmer working on some application. You get paid for the time you put in, but 99% of the time, it doesn't matter wether the company sells 1 copy or 1 million, you don't see a cut of the profits. The entertainment industry is different, since most of the jobs are short term contract work, the actors/writers/directors etc get paid x amount specified in their contract and they rely on residuals to get them thru the times when they don't have work.

In some ways it is hard to feel for either side, The networks are the typical bloated-big-company-screw-the-little-guy types and the creatives whine about not getting more money beyond what they were already paid.(I'd love to see the Photoshop team decide that they aren't going to deliver CS3 unless Adobe gives them a cut of each sale...)

Ultimately this is going to come to a head and the creatives will figure out that they don't need the networks to distribute their content

Re:

Now imagine that computer programming was a highly unstable profession, where any project you worked on could get canceled at any moment, and in any case, once you hit your 40's, you would cease to be hot and hip and might never work again--which means you

Re:It may be "promotional," but...

NOTICE: Possible Spoilers

Apparently they got tired of spending so much money on computer graphics, so almost all of the new shows are set in a muddy field, with some tents and some junk. It's turned into a freaking soap opera about mommies and babies. Fuck that shit, I want to see some nuclear explosions in space!

OK. First of all, Galactica is a drama set in space. It's not a scifi kill-fest. The awesome explosions and Viper vs. Raider battles are incidental to the plot. The show gets all its acclaim and awards (and most of its audience) from the script and acting. Without that, the show won't have lasted into season 2.

And the current situation on the planet is symbolically critical - recall the line last week when Tyrol said "We're going home" in reference to reassembling the fleet, when the whole first 2 seasons they wanted a planet to call home, they've found out (both before and during the occupation) that maybe there's more to a new home than soil. Also, you'll be getting your wish in Exodus Part 2, I bet, with 2 battlestars vs. 5 basestars, and 1000 resistance fighters versus the Cylons on the ground.

Back on topic: The webisodes were short (a total of about 15 minutes of content), but they are vital to introducing Duck and Jammer and their choices. Seeing the webisodes helps with the Duck-related scenes in "Occupation", and Jammer's conflicts in the other two episodes. It also really reveals the full irony of Tyrol's conversation with Jammer about Gaeta. That will echo through to at least Episode 5 "Collaborators".

Problems across NBC Universal

It's amazing how much ineptitude seems to be rising to the top at Sci-Fi and NBC Universal.

Bonnie Hammer cancels Farscape, a show with a dedicated fan base, because she thinks that the serialized plotline is too hard for the fans to follow. She makes this decision just as the Internet is starting to become a good way for fans who miss an episode to keep up with the series (iTMS started months later, and it should have been obvious to anyone that television and movies would eventually make their way to iTunes). She replaces it with the single-season flop Tremors: The Series, and is rewarded for her poor judgment by being promoted to President of USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel.

Mark Stern shoots the company in the foot by cancelling Stargate SG-1 (another show with a dedicated fan base) despite strong backing from its production company, MGM. To add insult to injury, Stern refuses to let MGM court other TV networks for a new home for SG-1. This is combined with the decision to separate the SG-1 franchise from its follower, Battlestar Galactica. Shortly thereafter, the nature of the synergy between Stargate and BSG is revealed, as BSG's season premiere ratings were substantially lower [savestargatesg1.com] than last season's premiere. MGM plans to release new SG-1 content direct to DVD, and they may end up producing a full Season 11 for iTunes and DVD. NBC Universal won't see a dime from those projects.

Sci-Fi Channel is also diluting their brand by airing professional wrestling, despite it already being carried on USA, in an apparent effort to mimic Spike TV, which at least runs five hours of Star Trek every weekday.

Now, Marc Graboff gets on the BSG production team's bad side by screwing them out of residuals, and tries to justify it by blaming it all on the BSG production team.

And finally, NBC decides to yank dramas and comedies from the 8pm time slot because they're "too expensive" compared to reality shows. Never mind that NBC rode the top of the rating charts for years on the backs of shows like Seinfeld and Friends (and, later in the evening, ER and Law & Order). It's almost as if NBC decided that being in last place with crappy-but-cheap shows was better than being top dog, and if they put Deal or No Deal on five nights a week, last place is where they'll end up.

Today there was also a big story about how NBC Universal is laying off about 5% of their workforce. [reuters.com] I wonder if they're taking suggestions for whom to axe.

Re:Problems across NBC Universal and ineptitude

The sort of clumsy handling of sci-fi programs you're talking about is, unfortunately, endemic in the TV industry. Good shows get cancelled (the original Star Trek and The Vistor come to mind right away). Other shows get so little in the way of resources that they become ridiculous (Lost in Space and (I'm sorry) the original Galactica).

Face it. TV doesn't "get" science fiction. These corporations are run by corporate suits with MBA's and degrees in marketing and have no soul and no imagination. These shows are nothing but product to them. Nevermind that Star Trek did more for encouraging research in a bunch of fields of science. It's no accident that the generation raised on Trek created PC's, PDA's, cell phones, and other technology. I'm reading now about the (real) experiments in bending microwaves (a cloaking device), matter teleportation, and energy weapons.

Clearly, to those of us in the tech industry and the sciences, these shows are NOT silly, mindless, childish or merely a "product." They are the source of many inspirations. We care about these shows.

TV doesn't. And the probably never will.

Perhaps a consortium of web geeks should approach Moore et al and offer them the services of a dedicated streaming server and a loyal fanbase. Maybe we can help good content make the jump FROM TV to the 'net.

What are the Google guys doing? They've got the money...and advertisers...this could actually work!

For those with limited horizons

I am seeing a lot of comments here with the commenter's saying things along the lines of "The webisodes are free anyway, so what is the issue with residuals? Who cares?" This is an amazingly short sided view.

Yes, the webisodes and similar media may be shown free at the moment, but that is a temporary thing at best. Say a year from now the show gets exported to another country and instead of showing the webisodes for free there, they decide to sell them through whatever the local equivalent of the iTunes store is at 50 cents a pop. I know all sorts of people that would happily pay for 2-5 minute chunks of extra content for their favourite series during the off season.

Or, (and this is very likely), the season 3 DVD releases of Battlestar Galactica include the webisodes as 'bonus content' the same way that movie DVDs include the trailers. And the studios will say 'hell, no one gets paid extra for including the trailers with the DVD, they're promotional material, so why should the actors/writers get paid extra for it?' At the same time, you can get that it will be advertised as the DVD set including the 'bonus episode worth of content' that it really is. The writers get paid for the episodes on that DVD, so why don't they deserve to get paid for the webisodes?

any one with minimal imagination can come up with other ways that content like this can be used or changed in ways that we are not seeing yet but that cross lines. If it doesn't happen with the Battlestar Galactica content,it will happen tot he next popular series that is inventive enough to reach out to the fans in new ways with new content. In a lot of ways, we are lucky that it is happening with an example that is clear cut in many ways in favour of the creative team and with people who are willing to fight. Otherwise, these types of rights and incentives might disappeared before anyone recognised they existed, and that would be the end of this type of content.

Feh.

That's what they get for calling them "webisodes".

I'm still pissed you can't watch them outside US

Talk about disrespect to the rest of the world.

Re:You're kidding right?

The article is talking about "webisodes" - 3-minute promotional mini-episodes you can get off the net - not BSG itself.

I'm waiting for the DVD, like the last 2-1/2 seasons. Much more fun to watch it all in a couple of sittings.

Re:You're kidding right?

FTA: "NBC Universal, the studio behind "Battlestar," refused to pay residuals or credit the writers of these "Webisodes," claiming they're promotional materials. So "Battlestar" executive producer Ron Moore said he wouldn't deliver any more of them, including the 10 that were already in the can."

10 refers to the Webisodes, not to the episodes of Season 3 running on SciFi itself.

Re:You're kidding right?

You can see 'em here
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/ [scifi.com]

Or go find them on bittorrent as .avi's
(which is what I did)
(it's not like the writers are getting residuals anyways)

Re:

Uh, he goes to scifi.com and clicks on all their ad banners for 20 minutes a week.

Seriously though, the webisodes were free to view online. I think getting a torrent of them serves the same promotional purpose. IMO the best way to watch the 10 that were re

Re:You're kidding right?

Considering they are free, it seems nobody from outside the North American mainland can view them. I tried last week and got stopped because it located my IP. What's the point when a determined person can get round the block anyway and then dump them on a P2P network and in the process create that avenue for your future non-american customers?

Re:You're kidding right?

Considering they are free, it seems nobody from outside the North American mainland can view them.

Eventually, if they ever decide to take this show overseas, they'll want to reuse all the same content & promo materials.

It can also be a matter of contract rights.
IE Sci-Fi doesn't have the overseas contract rights for he show.

Re:You're kidding right?

Yeah I'm aware of this and thought it was most likely, but I still wanted to mention it. I also want to mention that the internet sucks, not in a post dot.com bubble ironic sort of way but as a fact. I think we have to accept the fact that the internet isn't going to change the world, but the internet is being changed by the world to suit their existing business models. Its the reason why iTunes isn't 1 store but 21 stores.

Re:You're kidding right?

Please do not blaspheme the internet. It has changed everything, its just that the rest of the entire world has not kept up with frenetic pace set by our beloved internet.

Like, you know, how all content, all entertainment, all information, is now freely available to everyone everywhere, which is so tantalizingly similar to the abundant economies predicted by our favorite sci-fi shows (now, by the way, freely available for free download) that we cannot restrain ourselves from making ever more boastful predictions covering things we know nothing about apart from our certainty that they will be fundamentally changed by the internet. Like in the 90s only we're right this time.

I do not care what you say. The internet is not owned by the same corporations that own everything else. The packets that come to my house are not carried over wires owned by a profit seeking ISP, carried at their whim rather than mine. By virtue of my birth into this world I have earned an inalienable right to these packets and any other packets I might want to receive or send. The internet is not dependent on routers and switches owned by telcos that can decide to allow or reject packets based on their specific business needs or the constraints placed on them by the governments that allow them to operate. No one can sue me for doing something wrong, like piracy or theft of information or slander, as long as I am using the internet because the internet is a playground of limitless freedom that no man, no government, can ever hold back. Not even a nation of millions.

If you don't recognize that the internet has ushered in a new era of free, and freedom, then you way off in the weeds. We disciples praying at the altar of the internet are leaving you behind, old man.

Youtube, baby. Go watch them now.

Go to Youtube.com and search for "galactica webisode" [youtube.com] and you'll find they've all been posted. If you use the Firefox browser, you can install the Videodownloader extension and that will let you save youtube videos to your harddrive. So say we all.

Re:

Well done friend, may the gods guide you along your path.

Re:

Yay! Then you can watch them in depressingly over-aggressive hyper-compressed format. Awesome.

Re:

"These referred to the webisodes"

Like it says right there in the title and writeup. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re:I like BSG as much as the next guy

Here is the bottom line: If the company is making money off of the webisodes then the writers deserve their piece under union rules. However, if they are given away for free then they are indeed promotional materials and as such the writers/actors don't deserve any extra cash. For example, should the writers get paid for each time a BSG commercial airs? No, its just promotion for the show for which they do get paid.

I got the webisodes for free, did you guys pay? Really, I don't know.

Re:I like BSG as much as the next guy

What a shallow argument, what if the suits decide that really, the season premiere episode is really just promotional content for the entire season? What if they offer up that episode as a free download on the iTunes Store (as a good bit of pilots, and season premieres seem to be these days).

Shouldn't the writers get their residuals for those too?

Bottom line, if you want promotional content, hiring an advertising firm, if you're creating something regardless of length or what you decide to do with it, you should still be paying those creative folks their proper dues.

Re:You know what I want from BSG?

You probably pissed and moaned about the desert scenes in Star Wars too. :)

It's a story about people in the future. People have lots of desires, including the desire to not live in cans. So they give living on a mudball a shot. And it turns out to be a "Bad Plan(tm)". So now we have to get them off the mudball and back into some sort of fighting shape again. With the lessons learned, we can assume that they won't be satisfied until they reach earth (as a friday night special six months after the regular show gets cancelled).

Personally, I'm curious as to how they'll do it. I'm really enjoying the break in the action, as it were.

Regards,
Ross

Re:You know what I want from BSG?

Personally, I am enjoying the humans play the role of rebels/insurgents versus the militarily superior cylons... strapping bombs on their chest on suicide missions, but at the same time those captured have sacks put on their heads just like prisoners in Iraq / Guantanamo. Watching the conflicts within number 6 and number 8 (Sharon) who have been "exposed" to humans is also heady stuff. With plot twists like these, who cares about blowing up stuff in space?

Re:

Don't forget that the Cylon occupational government is called the CPA. The US occupational government in Iraq was called the CPA, as well (Coalition Provisional Authority).

The parallels are not suble, but they are quite appropriate.