November 12, 2008 by Editor.

LOS ANGELES, CA (November 12, 2008)—The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the nation’s second largest performers union, announced today that it has reached an agreement with videogame employers on terms for a one-year extension to the AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement, the union’s collective bargaining agreement covering performers working in videogames.

Terms of the extension agreement, approved today by the Administrative Committee of the AFTRA National Board, include:

One-year extension of the AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement, effective dates January 1, 2009, to December 31, 2009
3% increase in initial compensation for all session fees effective January 1, 2009
0.5% increase in AFTRA H&R contributions effective January 1, 2009
“We are pleased to have reached an extension agreement with the major videogame employers that keeps AFTRA members working and secures solid increases in wages and benefits on par with the five other major national contracts AFTRA negotiated earlier this year,” said Denny Delk, Chair of the AFTRA Interactive Media Steering Committee. “It’s a testament to the vision and bargaining power of AFTRA members that, in a time of global economic crisis, AFTRA members consistently find common sense solutions to difficult problems.”

AFTRA Assistant National Executive Director, Mathis L. Dunn, Jr., who serves as Chief Negotiator for the AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement, observed: “In addition to putting more money into AFTRA members’ pockets during a time when the country faces the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, this extension agreement secures additional contributions to performers’ health and pension benefits and provides continuing employment opportunities. This extension also permits the joint AFTRA and SAG Commercials Wages and Working (W&W) Conditions meetings currently underway to continue without interruption in preparation for negotiation of the Commercials Contracts which expire on March 31, 2009.”

Howard Fabrick and Scott Witlin of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP represented the videogame publishers. “The major videogame producers and publishers are pleased to have been able to work out this contract extension with AFTRA. The new agreement provides substantial wage and benefit increases to working performers. It also ensures that all games that go into production through the end of 2009 will be able to be completed without disruption,” Fabrick said. “It is no secret that these past twelve months have been a tumultuous time for labor relations in the fields in which performers work. The stability this agreement provides is good for working performers and for the videogame industry.”

The first agreement covering performers working in interactive media and videogames was negotiated by AFTRA over 20 years ago. The AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement is not a contract negotiated under the Phase One Agreement between AFTRA and SAG.

This extension of the AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement brings the total number of national collective bargaining agreements AFTRA members have successfully negotiated or extended this year to six: the Sound Recordings Code, Network TV Code, Primetime Exhibit A of the Network Code, Non-Broadcast/Industrial Code, and CBS/ABC Network Staff News.

In addition, AFTRA has extended a number of smaller agreements: the Electronic Media Agreement, Infomercial Agreement, Video News Release Agreement, and the Local Station Promo Agreement.

—Update:

From Variety, SAG Reaction: 

SAG hasn’t reached a new vidgame deal, and its contract will expire on Dec. 31. SAG national exec director Doug Allen said the guild will be launching talks in “the near future” but gave no other details.

“We look forward to continuing a productive relationship with the companies covered by that contract,” he added.

Posted in Interactive | Print | 19 Comments »

November 12, 2008 by WW.

YouTube Ventures Into Live Event Webcasting

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - YouTube will venture into webcasting later this month, in an effort to take the video sharing Web site’s popularity to a new level by showcasing the talent behind its most viewed videos.

The site, owned by search giant Google Inc., has matured from Web start-up and video fad to a site with loyal fans. But as any good TV industry executive will say, it needs to begin producing new and fresh content to keep its audience.

So, on November 22 in San Francisco, it is launching “YouTube Live,” a show featuring well-known stars such as rapper Will.i.Am and singer Katy Perry and YouTube sensations like 20-year-old Esmee Denters, who posted video of herself covering popular songs and became a star on the World Wide Web.

YouTube executives said the show will feature performers who are popular with the site’s users, a community that has already held unofficial events and whom the company wants to reach by streaming a live show for the first time.

“The value of YouTube is we’ve created this platform that’s been driven by the community, so this is in reaction to that,” said YouTube spokesman Chris Di Cesare “Having a community event that the community values benefits all involved.”

Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has been a repository for all kinds of Internet videos, from snippets of TV shows to off-beat demonstrations of skills such as cup-stacking to serious campaign ads in the recent U.S. presidential election.

But as other sites have found, Web surfers can be a fickle bunch of fans and keeping them on your site — which is what advertisers pay for — is a daunting task.

LIVE ON THE WEB

Taking their cues from the TV industry, Internet giants AOL, MySpace and Yahoo! have webcast original programing in recent years. What seems to work best, so far, has been live concerts by the likes of Madonna and The Pretenders.

Yahoo! Music landed car company Nissan as a sponsor of its tape-delayed concert series, called Nissan Live Sets, with the average concert receiving 2 million streams, the company said. The concerts are also broadcast on MTV cable channel Palladia.

For its part, YouTube said videos posted by the roughly 50 entertainers and other talents on the bill for “YouTube Live” have been viewed online more than 2.5 billion times, which the company said accounts for a big part of the site’s hits.

“These are the personalities that people at home have tuned in to watch,” Di Cesare said.

Those personalities include Discovery television show “Mythbusters,” Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, who will attend the “YouTube Live” event.

They will demonstrate a feat that has become a sensation on YouTube, the workings of a giant robot they designed to shoot paint at a canvas and create a version of the Mona Lisa, by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Singer Katy Perry, whose hit song “I Kissed a Girl” became an international chart-topper over the summer, will open the show. Perry, whose label is Capitol Music Group, posts videos at her own “channel” on YouTube.

Denters, the Dutch singer, is a budding star who rose to fame on the video Web site. More than 111 million times users have clicked on videos of her singing into a webcam, a homemade success story that eventually had pop star Justin Timberlake signing Denters to his Tennman Records label.

“It’s been a crazy story, and I have all that to thank from YouTube,” she said.

YouTube said it intends to hold follow-up events to “YouTube Live,” but it gave no details on those plans.

Posted in Media Business | Print | 9 Comments »

November 12, 2008 by Editor.

One of our regular contributors passed along a link to this interesting item from the Video Insider blog, which we thought we’d share this morning. It seems to suggest that digital revenues, which have been rising at good percentages (though, from very very low levels, making the percentages seem larger), won’t be immune from the economic meltdown.

AMIDST THE GLOOMY PROGNOSTICATIONS OF ‘09 advertising budget declines, one area that’s due for certain course correction is online video CPMs. We’ve heard everything from big media’s projections of 20% across-the-board declines in overall ad spending to the more optimistic flat spending in broadcast while magazine and newspaper tumble further. But one thing’s for certain: digital budgets are in for a wakeup call in 2009.

Whatever breed of “digital futurist” you trust — agency holding company, major online publisher or Silicon Valley technology fund analyst — this creative chooses instead to trust the tried and true forecasts of Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley. After hearing her recent run through the digital trends and spends at this past week’s Ad:Tech, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not her forecast for relatively flat to moderate search increases, while online display advertising spend heads south, doesn’t spell a course correction for online video CPMs as well.

Publishers and video ad networks who have enjoyed a two-year spike in online video CPMs might just find themselves in a buyers’ market with too much inventory to fill and not enough juice left in the “pre-roll exclusivity” argument to continue eclipsing broadcast and cable CPMS. What’s more, NBC’s Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMI) that surfaced during Advertising Week demonstrated that the percentage of online viewing audience during the Beijing Olympics still paled in comparison to the live viewing audience. So in an economic climate like this, is pre-roll exclusivity destined to become a luxury? Without the benefit of a CPM to CPM comparison from Olympic advertisers like Johnson and Johnson, VISA or GE, one can only speculate that, in a recessionary climate, we’re bound to see a leveling of online video CPMs. After all, ad buyers are likely to be under pressure to squeeze the same awareness and purchase intent thresholds out of even fewer dollars in ‘09.

What’s an online publisher or video ad network to do to compensate for the course corrections headed their way? Good question. Try looking outside the media world and consult the creative community. Differentiation in a time of commoditization is most likely to come from two places — better content and ad unit creativity. From a content standpoint, smart publishers should be investing in exclusive online video content whose attributes and narratives not only attract quality reach, but also create unique and elegant opportunities for brands to be adjacent. From a contextual standpoint, it’s high time we digital creatives put some new juice in the pre-roll ad unit(s) functionality that both extends engagement and offers creatives new tools to expand and grow the format.

Remember, the digital programs and ecosystems that we’re busy creating don’t treat online video ad units as a standalone “thing.” They’re part of a program of digital elements that make up a brand’s larger digital ecology — which, this coming year, is going to be all about lead generation, incentive/trial activation and loyalty programs. So if you think we’re all out here thinking about our rich media banner awareness campaign in a vacuum or our online video ads as a standalone awareness campaign — think activation.

From this creative’s perspective, we’ve got to get busy enhancing the opportunity for online video ad units to function as an exclusive and more compelling opportunity for advertisers to reach a quality prospect with a more engaging message. That means we had better get busy making them more interactive and more “activation”-focused than ever — rather than simply looking at them as another awareness topper that’s in line to take a big budget hit in the year ahead.
 

Posted in Media Business, SAG-AFTRA | Print | No Comments »