Battlestar Galactica 'Webisodes' Conflict Brewing 199
nebaz writes "MSNBC has an article saying that there is tension between NBC and Ron Moore and team about the royalties on the 'Webisodes' of Battlestar Galactica. The episodes have been seized by NBC, balking at Ron Moore's refusal to produce any more episodes, due to compensation issues."
Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
True, she's not a 6...but.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:True, she's not a 6...but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"It was revealed that, six years previously, Jeri had accused Jack Ryan of asking her to perform sexual acts with him in public, and in adult clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris. Jeri Ryan described one as "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling." These disclosures led Jack Ryan to withdraw his Republican candidacy for an open United States Senate seat in Illinois."
I wonder if "asking her to perform" is a pleasant euphemism for "coerced her
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I don't seem to remember seeing any assistance from the Borg during the liberation of that Russian submarine [imdb.com] or Project Reciprocity [imdb.com].
Uh.... (Score:5, Informative)
So yeah, it's a mess, and there's gonna be conflict in this arena for a while.
Re:Uh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also important that this is NBC (Score:2)
The sad thing is, this could ultimately mean the cancellation of BSG.
-Eric
free witing, but nbc owns it? (Score:4, Insightful)
NBC Universal, the studio behind "Battlestar," refused to pay residuals or credit the writers of these "Webisodes," claiming they're promotional materials.
not pay writers? sheet. if these people worked for nbc, would nbc not pay them for the time during their work day they wrote?
"you get no pay, peon, that was your break!"see how they feel if you lift the webisodes an puth them on your own site.
Re:free witing, but nbc owns it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:free witing, but nbc owns it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody said that they weren't paid at all. The article just says that they don't get paid residuals, which are extra payments, above and beyond what they are initially paid for their work, that writers (among other professions) get paid when their material is aired again, whether as a regular rerun during the season, during a marathon, or in syndication.
There are some good debatable issues here. When the show is broascast on television as a rerun, that is obviously a second airing, which generates residuals. But when is the "second airing" for a downloadable episode?
If one million people download an episode over the course of one week, should that count as one million "airings", or seven (one per day), or just one (for the week)?
If residuals are to be based on how long an episode is available for download, will that cause networks to remove episodes after a week, because to keep it up longer would trigger more payments to the writers (et al.)?
davidh
Re:free witing, but nbc owns it? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that no one will do gross. That is reasonable - there are many places where a real gross is really really high and the real net is zero or a loss. Take advertising for instance - pretty much all a loss (and this is where the OP is talking about). While it is purely a cost, it still increases net revenue by quite a bit.
If you do net then the studios play with costs - every thing becomes one and non-solid costs are greatly inflated. Say, for instance, one could say the five minutes by the studio exec to read over a document and sign it cost the company 5 million, to be deducted from the gross (and since it grossed 4 million that is a loss). Therefore you get no money. This occurs quite often.
If the studios were somewhat honest this wouldn't be such an issue. You could simply do a percentage of net income (or maybe even gross income). However the powers that be try and actively screw people out of money and are in a position to do so easily. Do all of them do it? I do not know - I suspect there are honest players out there who figure a happy well compensated employee makes you MUCH more than a screwed one (which is very true). However from my view it seems pretty much all the big players do not do this - including trying hard line DRM initiatives that screw customers (read - the RIAA and MPAA).
Eh, this is what a union is for. I've seen many cases where unions demand unreasonable ideas (it has resulted in more than one company moving labor out of country). Yet, this is precisely what they are intended to fix. If nearly everyone decides to do this there is no choice, if enough choose to go around the union then maybe it isn't that harsh on you and you need to re-evaluate your complaints. That's a free market for you.
Beyond Jericho? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pay them (Score:3, Insightful)
These things are clearly more than commericals and the actors should be paid. Heck, even actors in commericals get paid.
[BLEEP] (Score:3, Funny)
-CR
Pfff (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe since there is a new medium? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't fuck this up NBC (Score:5, Insightful)
Heresy? (Score:2)
I'm assuming a change of writers but would like to know for sure.
Re: (Score:2)
-Eric
Re: (Score:2)
Well ... if it hadn't been on after Heros, neither would I. :)
NBC used to known for great shows that put it in the top of the 'big three' networks. Since WB, UPN, and the prevalence of cable TV, its significance has dropped (although considering I watch SciFi channel owned by NBC, its influence may have grown).
I find it interesting that two of the "hot" shows produced by NBC right now are Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. Could this be the dawning of a "SuperHero blitz"
from someone in the biz (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:from someone in the biz (Score:4, Insightful)
Please note, I am one of the rare
Re:from someone in the biz (Score:5, Interesting)
But now we are being told that the money doesn't go back to the creative talent, ie presumably it goes into the oversized pockets of company execs/shareholders.
Quite so. See also Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org], which caused movies like Forest Gump to officially have no net profit (and thus screwing over the writer of the orginal book, as his contract specified that he gets a percentage of the profit).
The real pirates are in movie and music stuido board rooms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Tomorrow, on MSNBC (Score:4, Funny)
Watchmen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Watchmen (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It may be "promotional," but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if the actors got paid for the time they spent shooting those "promotions." Or makeup, costume, cameramen, the list goes on.
Re:It may be "promotional," but... (Score:5, Informative)
In some ways it is hard to feel for either side, The networks are the typical bloated-big-company-screw-the-little-guy types and the creatives whine about not getting more money beyond what they were already paid.(I'd love to see the Photoshop team decide that they aren't going to deliver CS3 unless Adobe gives them a cut of each sale...)
Ultimately this is going to come to a head and the creatives will figure out that they don't need the networks to distribute their content
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, a better analogy might be if Adobe had lured the programmers to their jobs with the promise that they WOULD get a cut of each sale. And then Adobe asked them
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would one have to imagine? Isn't this the case? I suppose maybe at 40 you don't cease to be hip in the programming world, but if you don't keep up with whatever tech its the same a
Re: (Score:2)
The key phrase is "if you don't keep up with whatever tech." In any profession (or, at least, any knowledge-based profession), you'll become obsolete if you don't keep up with developments in the field. In TV writing, however, you will become obsolete no
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It may be "promotional," but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they got tired of spending so much money on computer graphics, so almost all of the new shows are set in a muddy field, with some tents and some junk. It's turned into a freaking soap opera about mommies and babies. Fuck that shit, I want to see some nuclear explosions in space!
OK. First of all, Galactica is a drama set in space. It's not a scifi kill-fest. The awesome explosions and Viper vs. Raider battles are incidental to the plot. The show gets all its acclaim and awards (and most of its audience) from the script and acting. Without that, the show won't have lasted into season 2.
And the current situation on the planet is symbolically critical - recall the line last week when Tyrol said "We're going home" in reference to reassembling the fleet, when the whole first 2 seasons they wanted a planet to call home, they've found out (both before and during the occupation) that maybe there's more to a new home than soil. Also, you'll be getting your wish in Exodus Part 2, I bet, with 2 battlestars vs. 5 basestars, and 1000 resistance fighters versus the Cylons on the ground.
Back on topic: The webisodes were short (a total of about 15 minutes of content), but they are vital to introducing Duck and Jammer and their choices. Seeing the webisodes helps with the Duck-related scenes in "Occupation", and Jammer's conflicts in the other two episodes. It also really reveals the full irony of Tyrol's conversation with Jammer about Gaeta. That will echo through to at least Episode 5 "Collaborators".
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the spoiler warning. I didn't read the rest of your post because of it, but this seemed an opportune moment to point out that those of us outside the US couldn't even download the webisodes before this mess all came down, apparently (if I read the blogs right) because of similar problems over who had rights to what. So even if they were "promotional", the only thing they promoted to the non-US audience was that the studio were trying to screw us. Of course, given the whole "Series 2.0" DVD box se
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, what you said about looking for a planet, and then the fleet becoming home instead reminded me strongly of a point that the recapper Jacob makes - that everyone is getting exactly what they want, in the worst possible way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been pondering this issue, especially considering the decline of SciFi Channel's signature show SG-1.
First, SF Channel discovered its ratings boost was largely coming from women, who have traditi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The "mommies and babies" story line has been there from at least the second episode of the first season. Remember Boomer and Helo?
Nobody wants to watch a bunch of losers, it isn't very inspiring.
To each his own. I think it's great.
IMHO the BSG writers totally jumped off the deep end in this season, I can hardly watch it anymore.
So don't watch it.
Character development is all fine and good, but I don't want to watch a soap opera, I want to watch an a
Easier (Score:2)
It's the same way people dismiss any idea that is different from their own. Slap a handy label on it, place it in the same box as everything else with that label, and ignore it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First, 30 seconds per webisode is an exaggeration. It was probably more like 1.5-2 minutes per. And while that is still short, the actual "meat" of the webisodes are all original content, and content wh
Re: (Score:2)
You must still be caught inside the last episode of the previous season, before the Cylons' arrival. The rest of us managed to jump forward past that year.
phew... god damn misleading slashdot post (Score:2)
Preemptive strike (Score:2, Interesting)
Problems across NBC Universal (Score:5, Interesting)
Bonnie Hammer cancels Farscape, a show with a dedicated fan base, because she thinks that the serialized plotline is too hard for the fans to follow. She makes this decision just as the Internet is starting to become a good way for fans who miss an episode to keep up with the series (iTMS started months later, and it should have been obvious to anyone that television and movies would eventually make their way to iTunes). She replaces it with the single-season flop Tremors: The Series, and is rewarded for her poor judgment by being promoted to President of USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel.
Mark Stern shoots the company in the foot by cancelling Stargate SG-1 (another show with a dedicated fan base) despite strong backing from its production company, MGM. To add insult to injury, Stern refuses to let MGM court other TV networks for a new home for SG-1. This is combined with the decision to separate the SG-1 franchise from its follower, Battlestar Galactica. Shortly thereafter, the nature of the synergy between Stargate and BSG is revealed, as BSG's season premiere ratings were substantially lower [savestargatesg1.com] than last season's premiere. MGM plans to release new SG-1 content direct to DVD, and they may end up producing a full Season 11 for iTunes and DVD. NBC Universal won't see a dime from those projects.
Sci-Fi Channel is also diluting their brand by airing professional wrestling, despite it already being carried on USA, in an apparent effort to mimic Spike TV, which at least runs five hours of Star Trek every weekday.
Now, Marc Graboff gets on the BSG production team's bad side by screwing them out of residuals, and tries to justify it by blaming it all on the BSG production team.
And finally, NBC decides to yank dramas and comedies from the 8pm time slot because they're "too expensive" compared to reality shows. Never mind that NBC rode the top of the rating charts for years on the backs of shows like Seinfeld and Friends (and, later in the evening, ER and Law & Order). It's almost as if NBC decided that being in last place with crappy-but-cheap shows was better than being top dog, and if they put Deal or No Deal on five nights a week, last place is where they'll end up.
Today there was also a big story about how NBC Universal is laying off about 5% of their workforce. [reuters.com] I wonder if they're taking suggestions for whom to axe.
Re: (Score:2)
See, the great thing about reality shows from the perspective of NBC is not just that they're cheap. It's that they're cheap and they stay that way. The "actors" aren't going to demand more money next season i
Re:Problems across NBC Universal and ineptitude (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it. TV doesn't "get" science fiction. These corporations are run by corporate suits with MBA's and degrees in marketing and have no soul and no imagination. These shows are nothing but product to them. Nevermind that Star Trek did more for encouraging research in a bunch of fields of science. It's no accident that the generation raised on Trek created PC's, PDA's, cell phones, and other technology. I'm reading now about the (real) experiments in bending microwaves (a cloaking device), matter teleportation, and energy weapons.
Clearly, to those of us in the tech industry and the sciences, these shows are NOT silly, mindless, childish or merely a "product." They are the source of many inspirations. We care about these shows.
TV doesn't. And the probably never will.
Perhaps a consortium of web geeks should approach Moore et al and offer them the services of a dedicated streaming server and a loyal fanbase. Maybe we can help good content make the jump FROM TV to the 'net.
What are the Google guys doing? They've got the money...and advertisers...this could actually work!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Eleanor Roosevelt once said "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
Sci-fi discusses ideas. The evening news discusses events. Reality shows discuss people.
Perhaps the TV execs just understand reality shows better than sci-fi. Chalk up another one to the soulless minions of (television) orthodoxy.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless these executives (who are MBAs and not actual actors/producers themselves) pay is directly based on the popularity of a TV show, these stupid executives will continue to muck around and run the company and its property into ground.
BSG will be cance
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't about the shows being better, it is about how much better they are, and how much it matters.
For those with limited horizons (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the webisodes and similar media may be shown free at the moment, but that is a temporary thing at best. Say a year from now the show gets exported to another country and instead of showing the webisodes for free there, they decide to sell them through whatever the local equivalent of the iTunes store is at 50 cents a pop. I know all sorts of people that would happily pay for 2-5 minute chunks of extra content for their favourite series during the off season.
Or, (and this is very likely), the season 3 DVD releases of Battlestar Galactica include the webisodes as 'bonus content' the same way that movie DVDs include the trailers. And the studios will say 'hell, no one gets paid extra for including the trailers with the DVD, they're promotional material, so why should the actors/writers get paid extra for it?' At the same time, you can get that it will be advertised as the DVD set including the 'bonus episode worth of content' that it really is. The writers get paid for the episodes on that DVD, so why don't they deserve to get paid for the webisodes?
any one with minimal imagination can come up with other ways that content like this can be used or changed in ways that we are not seeing yet but that cross lines. If it doesn't happen with the Battlestar Galactica content,it will happen tot he next popular series that is inventive enough to reach out to the fans in new ways with new content. In a lot of ways, we are lucky that it is happening with an example that is clear cut in many ways in favour of the creative team and with people who are willing to fight. Otherwise, these types of rights and incentives might disappeared before anyone recognised they existed, and that would be the end of this type of content.
Re: (Score:2)
Feh. (Score:4, Funny)
You know what I want from BSG? (Score:2, Insightful)
So far this season it's all "Let's go start some shit up and blow up our own hovels - that'll show the Cylons!", or whatnot.
(admittedly, I may not have paid particular attention to the specifics of TFA)
Re:You know what I want from BSG? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a story about people in the future. People have lots of desires, including the desire to not live in cans. So they give living on a mudball a shot. And it turns out to be a "Bad Plan(tm)". So now we have to get them off the mudball and back into some sort of fighting shape again. With the lessons learned, we can assume that they won't be satisfied until they reach earth (as a friday night special six months after the regular show gets cancelled).
Personally, I'm curious as to how they'll do it. I'm really enjoying the break in the action, as it were.
Regards,
Ross
Re:You know what I want from BSG? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The parallels are not suble, but they are quite appropriate.
Re: (Score:2)
First they have to get past the Eastern Alliance with the help of some friendly androids!
Re: (Score:2)
WGA is ahead of the curve this time (Score:2, Insightful)
The WGA recognizes that web delivery is the future of the content creation industry. No one is sure yet how increasing broadband access and a generation of entertainment consumers weaned on BitTorrent is going to affect the commercial arts, but you can bet that web delivery, either for-pay, sponsored, or free, is going to be a huge part of the new business model. WGA screwed up once a already by failing to forsee how the home video/DVD market was going to become the major revenue source for movie studios. (
I'm still pissed you can't watch them outside US (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm still pissed you can't watch them outside U (Score:2)
Strike brewing... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Um.. that shouldn't have been "disappear to", it should have been "cut back to".
*pulls out mini-tape recorder*
Note to self: Next time, use preview button.
*puts tape recorder away*
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Informative)
The article is talking about "webisodes" - 3-minute promotional mini-episodes you can get off the net - not BSG itself.
I'm waiting for the DVD, like the last 2-1/2 seasons. Much more fun to watch it all in a couple of sittings.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Informative)
10 refers to the Webisodes, not to the episodes of Season 3 running on SciFi itself.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/ [scifi.com]
Or go find them on bittorrent as
(which is what I did)
(it's not like the writers are getting residuals anyways)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously though, the webisodes were free to view online. I think getting a torrent of them serves the same promotional purpose. IMO the best way to watch the 10 that were released is as the single recut episode that combines them all.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Insightful)
It can also be a matter of contract rights.
IE Sci-Fi doesn't have the overseas contract rights for he show.
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're kidding right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like, you know, how all content, all entertainment, all information, is now freely available to everyone everywhere, which is so tantalizingly similar to the abundant economies predicted by our favorite sci-fi shows (now, by the way, freely available for free download) that we cannot restrain ourselves from making ever more boastful predictions covering things we know nothing about apart from our certainty that they will be fundamentally changed by the internet. Like in the 90s only we're right this time.
I do not care what you say. The internet is not owned by the same corporations that own everything else. The packets that come to my house are not carried over wires owned by a profit seeking ISP, carried at their whim rather than mine. By virtue of my birth into this world I have earned an inalienable right to these packets and any other packets I might want to receive or send. The internet is not dependent on routers and switches owned by telcos that can decide to allow or reject packets based on their specific business needs or the constraints placed on them by the governments that allow them to operate. No one can sue me for doing something wrong, like piracy or theft of information or slander, as long as I am using the internet because the internet is a playground of limitless freedom that no man, no government, can ever hold back. Not even a nation of millions.
If you don't recognize that the internet has ushered in a new era of free, and freedom, then you way off in the weeds. We disciples praying at the altar of the internet are leaving you behind, old man.
Re: (Score:2)
The Internet is changing the world. The world, likewise, is changing the Internet at the same time. Neither is, or will ever be, free from the other's influence.
Re: (Score:2)
The point of the parody above is not to claim that no change is happening, but that the internet is not changing everything.
For example, it's not exactly making people better readers.
Re: (Score:2)
Not yet, anyway.
Muahahahahahahahaha!
-The Internet
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Youtube, baby. Go watch them now. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
By your command.
Re: (Score:2)
Great. Choosing one annoying flash player that stutters and overheats my machine over another. That's useful. Now if somebody had an MPEG 2 version or something moderately usable, I might care. I got three kernel panics playing through those Webisodes on my laptop from overheating. Why don't people realize that flash video is truly the lowest of the lows in terms of usability?
*sigh*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Like it says right there in the title and writeup. Thanks for clearing that up.
Re:I like BSG as much as the next guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I got the webisodes for free, did you guys pay? Really, I don't know.
Re:I like BSG as much as the next guy (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't the writers get their residuals for those too?
Bottom line, if you want promotional content, hiring an advertising firm, if you're creating something regardless of length or what you decide to do with it, you should still be paying those creative folks their proper dues.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The whole situation is brain-bending.
Plot gets old (Score:2)
I don't think they intend the occupation of New Caprica to be like Iraq, with the Cylons as the US. If you see that parallel, perhaps it is more in you than in the show.
Not everything on TV is commentary on US policy.