To paraphrase comedian Henny Youngman’s famous one-liner, take my KBR, please.
After all the bad press U.S. engineering and construction company KBR has received over the years for its operations in Iraq , both during its time as a Halliburton subsidiary and since, one might think it had learned a thing or two about how to avoid sticking its foot in its mouth.
About 60 pilots for scripted network primetime programs will be shot under AFTRA contracts this year, while few – or perhaps none – will be produced under SAG jurisdiction, according to sources close to the two unions, who spoke on condition of anonymity. This continues a trend that began last year, when roughly 90% of pilots (and 83% of pilot pickups) went AFTRA.
Those numbers, in turn, were a stunning reversal from previous years, which had had SAG garnering about 90% of pilots and 86% of pickups in 2008. But to see such figures two years in a row raises a fundamental question: Is SAG fading out of the TV business?
Maybe so. The ill-will generated by SAG hardliners evidently lives on in the producing community, notwithstanding the regime change 12 months ago that brought cooler heads to the elected and top appointed leadership of the guild. The stalemate and strike rumblings that ensued after the June 30, 2008 expiration of SAG’s contract led many television producers to choose AFTRA jurisdiction wherever possible. SAG finally ratified a new agreement almost a year after the previous contract’s expiration, but the damage to the guild was done.
Also driving the change is the migration of television production from film to digital video: a filmed TV show can essentially only be shot under a SAG contract, but a digital video TV show in most cases can be produced under either union’s jurisdiction. It appears that TV producers are overwhelmingly choosing AFTRA — even though AFTRA wage rates (minimums) are several percent higher than SAG’s.
So, AFTRA’s reach is growing in network primetime scripted programming. That’s only part of the story though. Much of television is non-scripted, non-network or non-primetime: news programs, talk shows, reality, daytime dramas (soap operas), game shows, and more. Those areas, other than scripted cable, are AFTRA’s alone (or are non-union), as AFTRA indicated last summer in a compelling “24-hour TV union” graphic.
This year’s pilot season still has several weeks to go, so the numbers could change slightly, but probably not by much. Last year, for example, as of March 11, there were 70 pilots set for production, whereas the figure for this year as of today is about 60. If the pattern holds, we may see SAG increasingly focused on motion pictures and AFTRA on TV. The transition will be somewhat slow, because existing network primetime scripted series are heavily SAG, but the transition appears to be happening nonetheless.
And what of new media? Those productions tend to resemble TV series more than theatrical motion pictures – i.e., they’re episodic, the budgets are low, they’re shot on digital video, and are viewed on home screens – so AFTRA may end up with the lion’s share of these as well, to the extent that the work is done under union jurisdiction at all.
It’s a murky and confused picture that once again underscores the importance of joint bargaining by the two unions and, ultimately, the likelihood that merger is only solution to the present crazy-quilt jurisdictional overlaps between the two unions.
Spokespeople for SAG and AFTRA had no comment.
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Although the Consumer Financial Protection Agency made it through the House more or less intact, the banking lobby is taking another, better shot at killing it in the Senate, and is planning to use the magic words: “big government” and “bureaucracy.” Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed for Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that lays out the confrontation. For most of the past two decades, many Americans trusted the banking industry-not necessarily to be moral exemplars, but they trusted that the banks were basically doing what was right for customers and for the economy. Then in 2007-2008 that mood abruptly reversed, as it became apparent that unscrupulous mortgage lenders, the Wall Street banks that backed them, and the credit rating agencies had been ripping off mortgage borrowers on the one hand and investors on the other.
The big banks face a choice. They can agree to sensible reforms that protect consumers and rein in the excesses of the past decades. Or they can simply decide to screw customers, but do it openly this time, since they have so much market share it almost doesn’t matter what customers think. How else do you explain, say, Citigroup’s concocting a new credit card “feature” explicitly to get around a new requirement of the Credit CARD Act? Or Jamie Dimon saying that financial crises are something to be expected every five to seven years, so we should just get over it?
Recently, I had the privilege of hearing Arianna Huffington speak at a fundraiser for the wildlife rehabilitation organization Wildcare. Her focus was on the significance of activating empathy, in this case, even for the smallest inhabitants of our planet. Though she playfully labeled Wildcare low-tech but high-heart, the organization itself aspires to be high-tech which got me thinking about the impact and continuing evolution of the Social Web.
Can technology help us build channels that facilitate not just participation and engagement, but true empathy?
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, there has been a lot of anxiety over what elections will now look like with corporations and unions free to spend as much as they like on political advertising. Much of the discussion focuses on the overwhelming influence that could be purchased by deep-pocket entities, or on whether or not foreigners will be allowed into the American election process. But my main concern is not the money that will be spent overtly, but rather with what happens outside the public’s eye — the unseen influence which may be wielded.
I am not denigrating the overt problems which may develop, but rather feel that these problems have been adequately explored elsewhere by many others. Giving corporations and unions full free speech rights when it comes to elections may destroy American democracy as we know it, and then again it may not. I do wonder how many corporations will actually take the opportunity to attempt influencing voters in such a fashion, personally, since corporations are in business to make money. And these days, annoying half the electorate may mean a serious drop in a company’s bottom line. So, at least at first, I think most large companies will be rather cautious about this sort of political activity. As I said, they’re in business to make money.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF). I am a Fellow with CAF.
Much of the public believes that tax cuts “create jobs.” A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool. This proves that repeating a slogan over and over can effect what people believe.
The Golden Rule is in danger. No, not the famed ethical code — though proponents of selfishness certainly have ignored it — but a thirty-foot sailboat of the same name that rose to prominence about half a century ago.
The remarkable story of the Golden Rule began in the late 1950s, as the world public grew increasingly concerned about preparations for nuclear war. In the United States, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was launched in November 1957, and polls showed rising uneasiness about the nuclear arms race — especially giant atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that spewed radioactive fallout around the globe.
Since misery loves company — at least during the time when misery doesn’t want to be left entirely alone — I grabbed on to Brian Dillon’s new book, The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives (Faber & Faber, $25), as fast as I could. One thing I hadn’t heard said before, although it now strikes me as absolutely and undeniably true, is that misery loves good company. And Dillon’s brimming volume (278 fact-filled, not to say fun-filled, pages) certainly provides good company for the ceaselessly suffering imaginary-malady-struck.
For once the author — who never identifies himself as hypochondriacal, but why else indulge in such unnecessary woe? — gets an introduction out of the way, he tells the medical histories and mysteries of those “tormented lives.” The nine memorialized are, in more or less chronological order: James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust (probably the least surprising inclusion), Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol.
Sarah Palin is missing the nucleus of what the Tea Party activists are all about. They are not looking for another John McCain or George Bush. While I sympathize with much of Palin’s platform, she misses the entire isolationist sentiment of the movement.
Tea party activists want a return to the constitution. While they require that our leaders fiercely defend our country, they also do not want to conduct any more pro-active wars that bankrupt the nation. They also value the life of our young men and women more than the profits of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. There are many right leaning independents that will no longer support the use of military force to spread democracy and build nations across the globe.
In the United States, our democracy works through a representative process. That is, we elect individuals to represent us in the legislature and we hold them accountable by making them run for re-election. Of course, the cynics need no further introduction to begin asserting “All politicians care about is getting re-elected!” I’m not sure that that statement is wholly accurate, but I’m also quite certain that it contains a great deal of truth. Still, that’s not the point. The point is that our elected representatives are to be held accountable for representing us.
To be held accountable, however, requires two conditions to be met: the representative must have the responsibility to act in our best interests–or as we wish them to–and perhaps more importantly, they must have the authority to act. In the title of this post, I assert that the republicans hate democracy, which is perhaps hyperbolic, but the basis for the accusation is that absent a 60-seat super-majority in the Senate, the minority party can be as obstructionist as it wants to be, and this republican minority has been just that.
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