I'm Tanja Barnes, the creator of the Writers’ Strike Chronicles podcast that was recorded and uploaded from November 2007 to February 2008.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is once again considering relaxing media ownership limits. (Learn more about this issue.)
Three years ago we won the fight against media consolidation -- but only after a major public outcry. Now the FCC is at it again, and we need YOU to speak up once more.
Send your message today. The FCC must hear from citizens about how media consolidation affects their lives and their communities. The "official" comment deadline of January 16 has passed, but the FCC is still accepting messages from concerned citizens. Speak out for a better media and democracy today!
Testimony of Patric M. Verrone
President, Writers Guild of America, West
Federal Communications Commission
Hearing on Media Ownership Rules
Chicago, Illinois
September 20, 2007
Chairman Martin, commissioners, fellow panelists, and members of the audience. I'm Patric M. Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America, West.
On behalf of 7,500 television, film, and new media writers, thank you for holding this hearing and allowing public comment on the topic of media consolidation. As you know, this is my second appearance before you and I want to avoid the accusation of just producing another late summer rerun.
So I will resist my instinct to restate the fact that, due to the unparalleled vertical consolidation of TV broadcast networks, movie studios, and cable television stations, the number of distinct voices in mainstream TV programming has dwindled to a handful.
I will also resist repeating that 20 years ago there were 29 dominant entertainment firms sharing 100 billion dollars in annual revenue and today there are six conglomerates sharing 400 billion.
And I will resist suggesting once again our remedy to this concentration of ownership – namely a requirement that at least 25% of non-news and non-reality programming must come from independent sources not owned by any of the four broadcast networks.
I will resist all of that. Instead, I would like to draw your attention to a growing advertising practice that severely affects both our work and our audiences. It’s called product integration. Embedded advertising. Branded entertainment.
Understand that I am not talking about product placement - the practice in which a bottle of water of a recognizable brand merely sits on a kitchen table as a prop. “Product integration” requires that the wacky next door neighbor announce that this week he is a bottled water salesman and extol the crisp refreshing taste of that particular brand of water.
The idea behind “branded entertainment” is to integrate commercials into the storyline so as to create “stealth advertising,” thus fooling the viewer into thinking they are not watching an advertisement. Most Americans, like the proverbial frogs in the slowly boiling water, may not notice how prevalent it has become. Yet Nielsen media research tells us that product integration has occurred more than 4,000 times on network primetime television in 2006.
Once only a mainstay of reality television it has crept steadily into all programming. On NBC’s Emmy-winning The Office, characters spend entire episodes working at Staples. On CBS’s highly rated CSI, characters promote the features of a General Motors Denali. Oreo cookies were a major part of the plot in two episodes of the CW family drama Seventh Heaven. On Smallville, contact lenses prompted a crime fighter to say, “Acuvue to the rescue” proving that even Superman is immune to neither Kryptonite nor product integrations.
NBC has gone so far as to hire a high ranking executive in charge of “strategic marketing and content innovation.” “Content innovation?” I naively thought that that’s what writers did.
We understand why advertisers want to find new ways of presenting their products to a wide audience. The rise of digital video recorders such as TiVo with their ability to allow viewers to fast forward through commercials has advertisers and networks nervous about how to sell their wares in a historically advertisement-supported medium. But there is a huge problem with their doing so without oversight. And it can be stated with a very short and very powerful word.
Integrity. When writers are told we must incorporate a commercial product into the story lines we’ve written, we cease to be creators. We become advertisers ourselves. Actors are subjected to forced endorsement when their character must shill the products without compensation or consultation. Consumers are required to watch commercial messages that are no longer identified as commercial messages. And in our experience people want (and deserve) to be told when they are being sold.
Product integration exploits the emotional connection viewers have with shows and their characters in order to sell merchandise. At the very least, we believe that writers and actors as creators of television should be consulted about potential product integrations as early as possible in the creative process and have the opportunity to refuse integrations if they believe it will harm the integrity of the program.
But to protect viewers (and this is where the FCC comes in), we support disclosure. Disclosure that adequately reveals product integration, is legible, and is held on the screen long enough to be read. The FCC should require a crawl or subtitled “chyron” to run at the bottom of the screen during the integration. The crawl would identify the product, its promoter, and the fact that the writers and actors do not personally endorse its use. This would be no more intrusive than the warnings broadcast on pharmaceutical ads or the phrase “paid advertisement” that appears in magazines or the incessant headlines that underscore all news channel broadcasts or the distracting promotions for what’s coming on next that are now a mainstay of our TV visual field.
To conclude, I will repeat one line from my earlier testimony relevant to these proceedings. “Homogenization is good for milk, but bad for ideas.” I hope you’ll appreciate that I neither mentioned a brand of milk, nor raved about its creamy freshness and wholesome good taste.
Thank you for your attention.
Contact Information:
Jody Frisch
Director of Public Policy & Government Affairs
Writers Guild of America, West
7000 W. Third Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
LA: 323-782-4576; DC: 202-412-1282
Neal Sacharow
Director of Communications
Writers Guild of America, West
7000 W. Third Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
323-782-4603
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Writers Strike Enters Third Week in Divide Over Online Content
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The strike has been felt across the entertainment industry, putting daily talk shows, sitcoms and dramas on hiatus due to a lack of scripts. The Writers Guild of America has called the strike over paying writers for online reruns and original work written for the Internet. We speak with WGA-East President Michael Winship.
Striking writers staged a last rally in central Hollywood Tuesday before contracts talks resume next week between their union and studios and major producers.
Some 4,000 people marched down Hollywood Boulevard. The writers were joined by TV and film actors and other union members. The rally comes 16 days into the strike that has been felt across the industry, with daily talk shows canceled and shooting on top-rated dramas postponed due to a lack of scripts.On Monday, about 500 television and radio writers working for CBS News also voted to strike following their own contract dispute with the network. Here in New York, writers have walked a daily picket line in various locations across the city. Democracy Now! went to Sony Plaza yesterday and spoke to some of the writers on strike.
The Writers Guild of America will meet next Monday with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for the first time since they went on strike. The two sides have clashed over paying writers for reruns of their work online and for original work written for the Internet. Michael Winship is the President of the Writers Guild of America, East. He joins me in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now.
- Interviews with striking writers.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.
- Michael Winship. President of the Writers Guild of America, East.
As Brooks Barnes wrote in Sunday’s New York Times: “Executives at studios like CBS, Fox and NBC Universal have said privately that their side was losing the public relations battle because they were not responding to union claims. Some were concerned that the union, using blogs and YouTube to publish its message, was succeeding in painting them as greedy.”Read the entire article here.
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The Writers' Strike Chronicles by Tanja Barnes • Banner photo by Eric Appel
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