30 August 2010
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General
Transcript from the Writers’ Guild podcast (24th August 2010). Also includes analysis of the recent Writers’ Guild / ITV drama agreement.
Participants: Tom Green (writer and WGGB online editor), Bernie Corbett (WGGB General Secretary), Anne Hogben (WGGB Deputy General Secretary), Jack Thorne (writer). You can listen to the interview in our podcast section. All of our podcasts can also be found on iTunes.
Tom Green: Bernie, how serious are the current public spending cuts for writers?
Bernie Corbett: This is very serious for writers. We know this because we’ve been experiencing cuts of various kinds for two or three years now in the TV industry. ITV has been enduring an advertising famine, with many series such as The Bill and Heartbeat being cut, and the BBC has been cutting here there and everywhere. So we know what these cuts are like. They mean that writers who have been making their living quite comfortably for a number of years find commissions drying up and even those writers who can get commissions are finding it much harder bargaining for fees and royalties. The Guild has also been negotiating things like lower repeat fees which we’ll talk about later (in the context of the new ITV drama agreement). When it comes to the public spending cuts it’s clear that this will be a very big deal across all areas of life and I’m sure that the cuts to the Arts Council, for example, will have a big impact.
TG: Jack, do you think this is a subject that writers are thinking about and talking about?
Jack Thorne: Totally, all the time. The thing that concerns me most is the way that we find new writers. The trouble I’ve found with TV and film is that access is so limited. There are people like the BBC Writersoom doing a great job, but what I always say to writers when they contact me on Facebook or Twitter is that theatre is a great way in. If schemes like the Royal Court Young Writers’ programme, Soho Core Writers’ programme, Paines Plough Future Perfect scheme and other schemes for new writers get cut then we’ll find that we get the same kind of writers everywhere.
TG: Anne, in terms of Guild members contacting the office, are concerns cropping up – people with financial worries, for example?
Anne Hogben: Yes, definitely. I’ve spoken to several TV writers recently who’ve said that they are just giving up, or moving into writing novels. There are also quite creative solutions going round, with people finding new ways of getting their work seen – using YouTube, for example, or self-publishing books.
TG: Let’s look at some of the areas in more detail, starting off with film. The big question here is what will replace the UK Film Council once it is abolished?
BC: The government has made quite a big public gesture saying that the Film Council is extravagant and wasteful and has to be swept away, but they have said that the tax breaks will remain and the money that is put into films will remain. But they have not yet given us any clues as to how that will be administered. So we don’t know if any of the regional film hubs will remain, for example. We do know that the government is talking about using the British Film Institute (BFI) as a resource, but we have to wait to find out the exact arrangements.
TG: Jack, you’ve had experience with the Film Council – what’s your take on the whole situation?
JT: I think it’s a case of ‘why now?’ It was an organisation that seemed to be changing quite rapidly with Tanya Seghatchian being made head of the film fund, and I don’t think the time and the space has been granted to see whether the new arrangements would work. I think it could have been an exciting time, so I don’t quite understand why they’ve suddenly decided that the whole thing is moribund.
TG: As a writer, what for you are the key elements that whatever body replaces the Film Council should have?
JT: The ability to support interesting work. And the ability to support work that won’t necessarily make a profit. My film The Scouting Book For Boys won’t make a profit, but me and the director, Tom Harper, and everyone involved will hopefully go on to make other films. I think it’s important that film talent in this country is supported in some way and that the drive is not only for profitable films.
TG: Bernie, do you have a sense yet whether the new government is open to discussion about this?
BC: There is a debate already taking place. Unfortunately quite a lot of it has been slinging insults to and fro about the past of the Film Council, but I think that debate is moving on to a question of what we want to achieve by subsidising film in this country. It seems to me that if the BFI comes more into the picture, then the likelihood is that we will be looking at something that is less about economic performance and more about the cultural entity of a UK film – something that I don’t think the Film Council has fostered very much.
TG: Moving on now to look at television, Anne, you mentioned that a lot of writers have been feeling the pain. Is there any sense that, with the advertising market picking up, the worst is over?
AH: That hasn’t really filtered through to the office if it is the case – although we do tend to hear more about members’ problems than their successes. We had an event recently with the BBC TV commissioners and even though their talk was all very positive, we found out later that there were radical cuts being made in BBC drama, so you can’t always believe what’s being said. The reality is that the writers we deal with are very anxious about the cutbacks and they see no real evidence of things improving.
TG: Bernie, I suppose the big question in terms of public funding for TV is the BBC licence fee. Even though it’s a different kind of public money, there’s a lot of pressure for it to be looked at or cut back. What’s your analysis of the situation the BBC faces?
BC: The BBC has already caught a financial cold over the past couple of years, particularly because of the property market and the fact that it built these fantastic new buildings at Broadcasting House and in Salford but isn’t able to sell off its old premises like Television Centre to pay the bills. There is an upcoming review of the licence fee and I think it’s pretty clear that the new government is not going to be very keen in an increase in the licence fee and may want to see a cut – I think, in fact, that the BBC is already discounting that. In the longer term the question will arise yet again as to whether we carry on with a licence fee or move on to another model such as a subscription fee. But I do think that for the foreseeable future the BBC is going to have to cut its cloth a lot more carefully than it has done for the past five or 10 years. But I don’t think that will hit comedy or drama quite as hard as some other areas. Because these are very fundamental parts of what the BBC does and there will be a lot of pressure on the BBC to retreat from the shiny floor talent shows that can perhaps be best left to the commercial sector and concentrate on the kind of things it does best such as high-end drama and the unique British sitcom.
TG: Jack, you were involved at the recent BBC drama writers’ event in Leeds – what was the atmosphere like there?
JT: There was some moaning, obviously, but it was broadly positive. For writers that I talk to, two things are really exciting them. One is BBC Two’s statement that they want to make state-of-the-nation drama and the other is the idea of drama not only being a staple of the BBC but also a way of marketing any channel. In America, channels like AMC are using drama as the door-opener. The fact that Sky is making dramas, the fact that Living has commissioned its first drama, is quite exciting, I think.
TG: Another important area of public funding for TV is the (Welsh-language channel) S4C grant that is now facing a big cut.
BC: S4C has been a fantastic success story. I don’t know if anyone, when it started thought that many people would watch a TV channel in the Welsh language, but a whole community of writers and producers has grown up around it. But it is very vulnerable in the current climate and that’s very worrying. The trouble is that if you cut something on that scale, will you affect its ability to carry on in any form?
AH: I think indigenous drama across the world is far bigger than anyone expected. For children, especially, it’s important for them to see some of their own world on TV.
JT: My dad’s family are Welsh and my great-aunt is a Welsh-language speaker and she frequently makes me watch Philip Madoc detective dramas on S4C because she says it’s good for me and better than anything on any of the other channels.
TG: One area where the Guild has been quite vocal is radio drama. The Friday Play has already been axed; what are the Guild’s other concerns?
AH: There’s a new Controller of Radio 4 starting next month and we’re hoping she will be more positive towards radio drama rather than reducing everything by the same amount across the board – which is crazy when it comes to radio drama because it’s so cheap. And I know you, Tom, and you, Jack, were saying earlier how much you love working in radio drama. It’s very liberating for writers. So we’re going to badger the new Controller to get more drama on the radio. It’s a great way to talent-spot and there’s lots more room for exciting and innovative drama because you can be very experimental on the radio.
TG: I’ve never met a radio writer who hasn’t said that writing for radio is a fabulous experience.
AH: And actors love it too because it’s a chance to get their teeth into something really new and imaginative.
BC: There’s also a big future in radio drama online. Because at the moment radio dramas are broadcast and then vanish, but when the BBC finally gets its archive online then the whole history of radio drama will open out – thousands of hours of it. It’s odd that the BBC leads the world in radio drama and also leads in new technology online and yet they haven’t yet managed to join that up and podcast radio drama. We’re very keen for that to happen and are trying very hard to make a deal with them.
TG: Moving on to theatre, you’ve mentioned already, Bernie, that Arts Council England has announced some big cuts already. One would imagine that there will be big implications for writers.
BC: I would expect that the Arts Council and also local authorities, who also put a lot of money into regional theatre, will be very anxious to avoid major theatres closing down. These theatres won’t be able to cut back much on their overheads so there is a great risk that they will cut down on new writing. They can do so almost invisibly by reviving old plays, and I am rather anxious that this will be an area where they will penny-pinch. We will have to keep a close eye on that because it’s been shown in recent years that new writing in British theatre is much more popular than anyone expected. So it will be a real loss if that bears the brunt of cuts.
TG: Jack, you’ve written for theatre and mentioned earlier its importance in helping younger writers get started. Do you have concerns for the whole theatre ecology when these cuts go through?
JT: Yes. And I realised that I said earlier that theatre was a good way into telly, and it’s not – it’s a good way into theatre! It’s really important that we have a way of finding new voices because that’s one of the things that makes this country good at art. And if that gets cut back, if literary departments get cut back, we’re in real trouble.
AH: Another big concern is the mid-career writers. Often there’s support for new writers and dead writers but not for those mid-career. There’s a model in Germany and Sweden whereby they actively support mid-career writers, while in this country we always seem to want the hot new thing, and then after a few years they are cast aside. Now is a time to think about the most cost-effective use of public funding, and rather than hurling it all at brand new people, some of it perhaps should go to those mid-career.
JT: There are also a lot of writers who are finding new ways to get work on, which is brilliant. So there are some positive things coming out of the cuts, too. Not to contradict anything else that has been said.
TG: Moving on to videogames, not an area that receives any public funding so far as I’m aware, but there was this lobby that the Guild has been involved with, through Guild members like Andrew S. Walsh, for a tax break – to put us on an equal footing with other countries. This was all set to go through but now, Bernie, the new government have said they’re not going to do it.
BC: Yes, this is mystifying. There was a lot of lobbying and very patient persuading before the Labour government decided to introduce tax breaks similar to those enjoyed by the British film industry and then almost the first thing the coalition government did was to say that this would be scrapped. This is a mad decision because the UK was one of the leaders in the videogames industry but the brain drain is already happening and people are going to Canada and Spain and other places because the governments there recognise that this is a big new industry. I really hope that the government will realise that they did make a big mistake on this and reverse it. Otherwise we’re likely to see that videogame industry being reduced to a footnote rather than being a hub.
TG: Finally, on this subject of the impact of public funding cuts, we move on to book writers. I guess in terms of things like Arts Council support for writers’ in residence there will be an impact.
BC: Yes, I think that kind of funding – and poetry is worth mentioning here, too – is very vulnerable because it’s not quite so much in the public eye as the major performance arts. The Public Lending Right, whereby authors get 6p every time someone borrows one of their books from a public library, is another area of concern. The recent Digital Economy Act did propose to extend this to digital books and e-books. But it does look like this change, although enacted, will probably not be implemented for several years. Even worse, the existing scheme, which is modest enough, is likely to be cut again so that the rate is even lower. It might not seem like an important scheme, but in a surprising number of cases it does make up a significant amount of a writer’s income. I have been to the Department for Culture and talked to civil servants about this and obviously it’s something we’ll be trying very hard to protect.
TG: Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground there and I’m sure we’ll return to many of those subjects in future podcasts.
Writers’ Guild / ITV drama agreement
TG: I want us to talk briefly about the recent agreement that the Guild has made with ITV to cover drama.
BC: It’s an important agreement but it’s not actually all that new. Although we only just signed it, a lot of it was negotiated back in 2007 and some of it has been in use since then. But it’s now officially all in place. The main points are that the minimum fees for an hour of original drama have gone up quite sharply, to £11,500 for an hour. It’s £9,000 per hour for series and £3,000 for a half-hour for a long-running series. Those rates had not gone up for a long time, so we’ve now got them up to date. In fact, we’ve already put in a claim for a rise from January 2011 so we don’t start falling behind all over again. We’ve agreed as well that in many cases the writer will receive a 100% advance on future earnings when production of the show starts. So even if you’re only on the minimum of £11,500, when the cameras start rolling you will immediately get another £11,500 as an advance on your future royalties and residuals and whatever. As with our other TV agreements, that doesn’t apply to long-running series and soaps. But it does mean that at long last the ITV agreement is in line with our BBC TV agreement.
The other side of the coin is that in order to get those advances we did agree to cut the repeat fees in half. So, instead of a 100% primetime repeat fee, you now get 50% of your original fee – still not a bad pay day but it is a big cut. We did it partly so that we could make the other advances but also because we had to realise that these repeat fees were making it uneconomic for ITV to repeat dramas – remember they have to pay fees to the actors and musicians etc. So along with the representatives of the other creators and performers, we have agreed to cheaper repeats in the reasonable hope that will make more repeats happen. We’ll have to see how that works out over time, but we did make that leap.
The other big element of the deal is that we’ve established a forum comprising people from the Writers’ Guild, ITV and the agents, to discuss any issues around this agreement or anything else so that we can deal with issues as they arise. We are already in negotiations about changes to the agreement because we need to bring the agreement up to date in two more areas – commissioning and repeats on ITV2, 3 and 4, and how writers should be paid for reuse of their material online, particularly on the ITV Player catch-up service. We’ve had a temporary arrangement for the past two years whereby ITV have paid a lump-sum to the Guild to be distributed, and later this year we will distributing that money to writers – but it’s really only a token payment and we need to have a better system in the future.
TG: Just to clarify, will the Guild be distributing the ITV Player money just to its members or to all of the writers involved?
BC: It will be to all the writers involved, whether or not they are Guild members. Obviously we hope that writers will become members if they’re not already.
TG: More generally, it’s worth pointing out that this ITV agreement is applicable whether writers are Guild members or not. But if you’re not a member, you can help the Guild with future agreements by joining.
BC: We have a firm principle in the Writers’ Guild that we always make agreements applicable to all writers, not just to our members. There is self-interest in this – otherwise non-members would be able to undercut the rates.
TG: And, very briefly, could you give us an overview of other TV negotiations the Guild is currently involved with?
BC: There are currently negotiations with the BBC dealing with very similar issues – the cost or repeats, work on minor channels and work online, including the planned online archive about which we’ve been in quite detailed negotiations for some time and I’m hoping will come to fruition later this year.
