Posted:
Reruns on TV from next week
Prithwish Ganguly & Soumyadipta Banerjee
Saturday, November 08, 2008 03:10 IST
Producers, workers stick to strike plan
MUMBAI: This weekend, it may be a good idea to become a couch potato and
have your fill of your favourite soaps because come Monday, they're
going to go off the air.
In the biggest crisis facing the TV industry, both the workers'
federation and producers have decided to go on a strike.
While the workers have decided to stop work till their demand for
shift-wise payments is met, the producers, left with little option, have
decided to suspend shooting.
With little or no content bank, private TV channels will be hard-pressed
to keep viewers glued to TV sets. Though most are planning re-runs of
old programmes, the National General Entertainment channels, a cluster
of about 350 national and regional channels, announced a blackout of
fresh episodes of all entertainment and infotainment programmes from
Sunday night.
For the past two days, DNA has reported how the stalemate between
producers and workers threatened to snowball into a larger crisis,
affecting viewers.
The problem has its roots in the workers' demand to be paid by the
shift instead of the current practice of monthly payments. This amounts
to a nearly 300% hike, naturally escalating production costs. Producers
tried to solve the crisis by seeking more funds from channels, but they
were turned down.
While producers say they cannot afford to shoot at such low profit
margins, channel honchos say increased production costs in the midst of
the current economic slowdown is something they cannot absorb.
"There is no way out. We will have to re-package old content and air
it. We have already made our stand clear to the producers that we cannot
afford to pay them more. They must understand the crisis we are staring
at during this recessionary phase," said Tarun Mehra, COO of ZEE
network.
Seconding Mehra is Albert Almeida, executive vice-president of Sony
Entertainment Television. "From Monday onwards, we will only air
repeat shows as we don't have any fresh content. Repeat shows will
have huge negative impact on our viewership and advertisement revenues.
We hope this deadlock is resolved soon. At the same time, we cannot give
in to the illogical terms and conditions of the producers'
bodies," he said.
A Star spokesperson too said they would start telecasting old shows from
next week. "We are experimenting with recaps, omnibus episodes,
story so far etc. We are also planning to put repeats of some of our
weekend shows on weekdays," he said.
The impasse between the workers and the producers has been going on from
the first week of October. The situation was defused after producers
agreed to pay hikes. But that never happened.
"A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed three years back
with the producers. But after the agreement ended, the wages have not
revised. We have signed another MoU, but the payment agreed upon was
never implemented. The producers say the channels have not given them
the budget to pay our dues, but it's their fault. They did not take
into account our new wages while signing contracts with the
channels," said Dharmesh Tiwari, president of Federation of Western
India Cine Employees (FWICE), an umbrella body of 22 unions and 1.5 lakh
members.
Prithwish Ganguly & Soumyadipta Banerjee
Saturday, November 08, 2008 03:10 IST
Producers, workers stick to strike plan
MUMBAI: This weekend, it may be a good idea to become a couch potato and
have your fill of your favourite soaps because come Monday, they're
going to go off the air.
In the biggest crisis facing the TV industry, both the workers'
federation and producers have decided to go on a strike.
While the workers have decided to stop work till their demand for
shift-wise payments is met, the producers, left with little option, have
decided to suspend shooting.
With little or no content bank, private TV channels will be hard-pressed
to keep viewers glued to TV sets. Though most are planning re-runs of
old programmes, the National General Entertainment channels, a cluster
of about 350 national and regional channels, announced a blackout of
fresh episodes of all entertainment and infotainment programmes from
Sunday night.
For the past two days, DNA has reported how the stalemate between
producers and workers threatened to snowball into a larger crisis,
affecting viewers.
The problem has its roots in the workers' demand to be paid by the
shift instead of the current practice of monthly payments. This amounts
to a nearly 300% hike, naturally escalating production costs. Producers
tried to solve the crisis by seeking more funds from channels, but they
were turned down.
While producers say they cannot afford to shoot at such low profit
margins, channel honchos say increased production costs in the midst of
the current economic slowdown is something they cannot absorb.
"There is no way out. We will have to re-package old content and air
it. We have already made our stand clear to the producers that we cannot
afford to pay them more. They must understand the crisis we are staring
at during this recessionary phase," said Tarun Mehra, COO of ZEE
network.
Seconding Mehra is Albert Almeida, executive vice-president of Sony
Entertainment Television. "From Monday onwards, we will only air
repeat shows as we don't have any fresh content. Repeat shows will
have huge negative impact on our viewership and advertisement revenues.
We hope this deadlock is resolved soon. At the same time, we cannot give
in to the illogical terms and conditions of the producers'
bodies," he said.
A Star spokesperson too said they would start telecasting old shows from
next week. "We are experimenting with recaps, omnibus episodes,
story so far etc. We are also planning to put repeats of some of our
weekend shows on weekdays," he said.
The impasse between the workers and the producers has been going on from
the first week of October. The situation was defused after producers
agreed to pay hikes. But that never happened.
"A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed three years back
with the producers. But after the agreement ended, the wages have not
revised. We have signed another MoU, but the payment agreed upon was
never implemented. The producers say the channels have not given them
the budget to pay our dues, but it's their fault. They did not take
into account our new wages while signing contracts with the
channels," said Dharmesh Tiwari, president of Federation of Western
India Cine Employees (FWICE), an umbrella body of 22 unions and 1.5 lakh
members.
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