United Hollywood and LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke posted the following from WGA member Laeta Kalogridis: “Here’s the proposal that the WGA is bringing to the room as I understand it (got this from someone on the Board):
A TIERED PAY SCALE based on the number of times something is viewed via streaming.The AMPTP did not make an offer on downloads or (EST) Electronic Sell Through. That’s supposed to come today. Let’s hope it does.As for streaming, our proposal is X bucks a year for X number of streams. And starting very reasonably for a low number of streams. Every time the number of views reaches a certain threshold, the compensation bumps up into the next tier.
It’s a simple and fair idea—as with a traditional residual structure, there is a basic payment for the right to use content on the internet. And, as the work is used more and more, different tiers of compensation kick in—as the companies make more, the content creator makes more. All we ask is that if the content is a huge hit, our compensation scales upward accordingly. The company and the content creators share in the success.
We are willing and able to negotiate on what those X numbers should be. We welcome the AMPTP cooling its hostile rhetoric, and we see no reason why cool-headed discussion can’t make this system work.”
