The unionists roamed the Chicago convention floor mulling increased competition, falling wages, rising use of part-time workers, foreign ownership, downsizing, declining job security, soaring health care costs, and threats of new technology.
The all-too-familiar topics are usually associated with steel, auto and construction workers, and some white-collar employees. This group, however, seemed different, at least on the surface.
Hey, wasn’t that Don Hastings, a star of “As the World Turns,” and Frances Reid of “Days of Our Lives”? Could that be John Randolph, a character actor on hundreds of TV episodes? Nearby, wasn’t that game show host emeritus Gene Rayburn? And Chicago TV anchor Carol Marin?
This gathering of the well-coiffed and frequently stentorian-voiced was the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It’s a 77,000-member union of multimillion-dollar TV anchors, like Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, as well as TV stars, disc jockeys and, most of all, actors.
In a small way, it was fitting that they met across from the NBC Tower, home of NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5. Only a few months ago, WMAQ management proposed during contract negotiations what amounted to a weekend rent-a-newsanchor position, namely the ability to hire part-time anchors who would be paid on a per-diem basis and get fewer benefits than full-timers.
The plan didn’t fly. But the fact that it was raised reflects changing times, in particular the dramatic rise in part-time employees across the entire work force.
Downsizing is rampant in broadcasting, which covers about 10,000 AFTRA members, of whom 5,000 are in news. A thrust to part-time help is greater. The non-union sector grows, too. Cable News Network, a shining success of the past decade, is a symbol of such growth.
The union’s jurisdiction is a patchwork. It includes the once large, now dwindling, area of live television, as well as radio and sound recordings. It shares with the Screen Actors Guild jurisdiction over those in now-dominant taped television, as well as commercials, jingles and industrial shows.
While some members make huge incomes, most scrape by. Given the vicissitudes of acting, most aren’t doing what they desire at any moment. Some guess that the average annual AFTRA income is $25,000, but a majority probably struggles to earn $10,000.
Technology is a big threat, especially in sound recordings. AFTRA members get a royalty on each album of theirs sold, while sharing in royalties on sales of tape equipment and blank tapes. But because of a huge loophole in the copyright law, a performer and a record producer, unlike a composer, get zilch when something is played on radio.
The threat is digital transmission, which will bring CD-quality sound. You can bet that there will be pervasive piracy as consumers use digital tape recorders to tape songs and albums, leading to a drop in album sales and, thus, royalties. It’s no small matter: In 1992 the sound recording market in the U.S. and Canada grossed $9 billion, compared with $4.9 billion for American-made movies.
Then there’s health care. As Dick Kay, the WMAQ-Ch. 5 political reporter and an AFTRA national board member, says, “We’re struggling particularly to find a solution for those who now find themselves forced to work only part time and are thus ineligible for health benefits.” If it weren’t for AFTRA’s health plan, many would have nothing.
The union is undergoing transition. It has a new, well-regarded and young (39) executive director, New York-based Bruce York. He’s a lawyer who came from the Air Line Pilots Association and has been especially aggressive in the technology area.
It also has a change in internal structure, which gives broadcasters their own department, and a switch in its unpaid presidency as Reed Farrell, 63, a Chicago voiceover specialist, passes the baton to Boston TV reporter Shelby Scott, 56, expected to be elected Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, failed merger talks with the Screen Actors Guild have been revived, though with the wariness of broadcasting members. Many have steady jobs and don’t relish the prospect of being consumed by, and yet still essentially subsidizing, an even larger group of actors.
Still, the conventions, whose guest speakers included Mayor Richard Daley, Rev. Andrew Greeley and Studs Terkel, exuded a sense of knowing its challenges and corporate opponents better than in the past.
Like a first draft of a script, that’s a start.
Progress at Satellite Control
WBBM-Ch. 2’s “Satellite Control,” the ongoing test of the gullibility of viewers as the station seeks an image of super-duper high-tech live journalism while running moth-eaten videotape, is making some dramatic progress.
Last Monday, all four screens showed the frozen visage of President Clinton. Then, somebody hit the “play” button and we watched Clinton remarks, about canning FBI Director William Sessions, made a mere seven hours earlier. They’re getting there.
Wise, uh, choice
On behalf of Tribune Co., I’d like to thank WMAQ-Ch. 5 sportscaster Mark Giangreco for not lingering Thursday over his (presumably unplanned) addition of a letter to a word when he sought to inform us that the Cubs had signed their “No. 1 pick” in the amateur draft.
An `expert’ speaks out
Ethical musings got too close for comfort Tuesday evening for John Sununu, the former White House chief of staff and now a co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.”
His show’s topic was the firing of FBI Director William Sessions (“Tonight, like everyone else in the capital, we’re debating the fallout,” co-host Juan Williams assured us beyond-the-Beltway rubes). Sununu defended Sessions, in particular against allegations of using government aircraft for personal business.
“You know you’re an expert on taking-” guest Ronald Kessler, a journalist and FBI observer, started to say before interrrupted by Sununu, who once got into hot water for government-subsidized treks to his Boston dentist and Colorado ski junkets.
“You bet I am,” Sununu shot back. “I’m an expert at the distortions that come out of cheap-shot artists like you.”
Sessions’ son Lewis, also a guest, sought to change topics, but Sununu interrupted him and glared at Kessler.
“Cheap-shot artist!”
Sununu was in need of a privately subsidized martini and shot of elephant tranquilizer.
Justice Gergen?
Three cheers for Mayor Richard Daley.
In a New York Times interview last week, it was clear that he didn’t have a clue as to who was David Gergen, the president’s new chief flack.
“The Supreme Court?” he said when asked his opinion of Gergen’s hiring, before being enlightened by an aide.
If you’d watched hours of palaver from Washington journalists about the Gergen hiring, and its ramifications for the Republic, one might have found such unfamiliarity not evidence, as did the Times, of a man “at times oddly out of touch.”
Instead, one might have found it a refreshingly blissful ignorance of capital affairs.
A warning to William Daley
President Clinton still seems to be trying to ease the hurt of William Daley, the mayor’s brother, who lost out for transportation secretary.
First, he made it known he’d give him a nice-paying, little-work, part-time job on the board of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae). Now, he’ll make him administration lobbyist for the North American Free Trade Agreement.
NAFTA is in trouble, despite the boosterism of the influential New York Times. It’s running a series of unremittingly pro-NAFTA special advertising sections that are eliciting negative comments from those who accuse it of stiffing NAFTA critics.
Daley might be better off soliciting funds for the Committee to Save Dan Rostenkowski.
