WGA rules! Inside the comedy writer battles for correct compensation with Rich Talarico
Rich Talarico is a 20+ year WGA member and two-time show captain who also served as strike captain during the 2007-2008 strike. He is a Peabody® Award winning and four-time Emmy® nominated writer and producer best known for his work on Key & Peele. Rich wrote and produced on shows like MADtv, Review, Saturday Night Live & The Tonight Show. Rich is an alum of Chicago’s Second City. Rich appeared in featured roles on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, MADtv, the feature film High Fidelity and numerous TV ads including A&W Root Beer’s classic commercial, “Mr. Dumass.” more at richtalarico.com . Rich is a WGAw Show Captain for Key & Peele
Rich’s recent interview I just did with latenightist, that explains the issues I’m campaigning on https://latenightist.com/q_and_a/pay-your-writers-a-q-and-a-with-rich-talarico-of-key-peele/
Rich’s official campaign site for his WGA Board Seat Campaign: https://elections.wga.org/2022/rich-talarico
WHY RICH IS RUNNNG FOR THE WGA BOARD
Comedy writers have not been and are not being appropriately paid by the studios, and we need the Guild’s help in this fight. Unfair use and numerous, MBA violations affects not just Key & Peele, but virtually all comedy writers, including many of the most known, most beloved shows. Royalty payments are distributed to heirs, and heirs of heirs. We need systemic change as companies continue to egregiously violate the 5 minute promotional clip exemption in our contract.
Additionally, WGA writers’ material is being unjustly exhibited on www.cc.com as an “Archive” (but we are not being paid archival rates) and according to MBA, “archival is not promotional.” We need fair back pay for any and all Archival Postings exhibited on the cc.com. In addition to seeking better transparency between the studios and WGA, I pledge to advocate for improved communication between writers and the Guild.
OVER-PROMOTION & THE ABUSE OF THE 5 MIN PROMO CLIP RULE
First, what is a clip? The industry standard on what a promo clip is, has long been established as “Merv Griffin” style bits to entice the audience to watch/buy. Longer than something you would see on a talk show is too long. And, Viacom flooding the promotional space with hundreds upon hundreds of “promo” clips (many of which are illegally over the five minute limit) destroys us financially and will ultimately devastate all comedy writers’ livelihoods.
You consume a sketch show differently than you would consume a sitcom or drama. A clip from a sitcom or drama would entice you to watch the full episode or season, which you would theoretically have to pay for, while a sketch show clip would entice you to watch more sketches, which are currently available for free. This is not promotional use. This is not a fair and reasonable reading of the MBA “promo exemption clause.” While the MBA is silent on the number of clips that can be used as excerpts, it is not fair and reasonable to gobble up whole shows and display them as “promotional.” The clips fail to be excerpts– if the entire show can be watched for free in excerpt form. The promotion, in our case, is the exhibition.
As we’ve argued since 2013, five to ten clips per season should be sufficient to entice an audience to buy. Originally, the Guild backed us on this, but have since chosen to ignore these violations. Key & Peele only has 298 sketches in total. As of December, 2020 (just on YouTube) there were over 350 “promotional” full-sketch uploads and Viacom continues to add more day by day. Of these 350+ uploads, there are (at least) 35 compilations which include bundles of Key & Peele sketches, some of these are longer than the length of full episodes. There are also uploads that exceed seven, eight, and 12 hours. This does not even account for Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other platforms where there are also hundreds of millions of “promotional” streams.
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