As labor disputes go, the six-week-old lockout of 2,200 broadcast technicians by Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Television Network is hardly in the same league with the five-month-old National Basketball Association lockout.
After all, there is no NBA season. Everybody knows that.
At ABC, the shows still go on. Although occasional technical glitches pop up and some viewers have noticed the union’s success at convincing some celebrities, White House officials and other Democrats not to cross picket lines at the ABC News studios here and in Washington, televised life endures.
But the dispute involving ABC and members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, or NABET, has earned its own rights of recognition because it reflects some of the broader tensions that are simmering in one of the most profitable and unionized businesses in America, broadcasting.
The list of unresolved and expired broadcast union employment contracts–in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere–is part of a larger and evolving story of how a business that chronicles the effects of change every day is dealing with it when it hits home.
“The tension on the relationship in broadcasting is only going to grow. It’s not going to diminish,” said Greg Hessinger, assistant national executive director of the news and broadcast division at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the larger, broadcast performance union that represents some 80,000 members.
Why? One need only look at the TV directory and the dozens and dozens of cable channel offerings to understand why television broadcasters may feel like Detroit automakers did 20 years ago when they watched Toyota and Nissan storm the beach.
Also look at the squeeze unions are feeling from technological advances that have practically eliminated the need for three- and four-person news crews.
At the same time, competition has driven up the price of producing television programming, especially sports, pushing broadcasters to offset these higher costs by cutting costs elsewhere.
Unlike the NBA lockout, where salary is the basis of the dispute, issues separating broadcast employees and broadcast management have much more to do with how the work is done in an industry roiling from the impact of galloping technology and cut-throat competition. Of particular interest to the broadcast news unit of AFTRA are rules that govern the gathering of the news and the production of newscasts.
“When you combine the networks’ declining share of the audience with the onset of technological advances, it is inevitable that the networks will seek to use those advances . . . to reduce the number of people to produce the newscasts,” Hessinger said.
The themes may sound familiar to anyone who has watched the pains in remodeled industries like steel and automobiles and airlines. As in these previous restructurings, unions are seeking to preserve a way of work and standard of living, while broadcast executives, worried about real and perceived threats from cable and satellite television and the Internet, move to cut costs in the name of shareholder value.
A news blackout is in effect on the ABC/NABET negotiations. Prior to the blackout, the union said it was trying to preserve health benefits. ABC said it merely wanted the same contractual deal with NABET that NBC and CBS had obtained from their technical workers. Executives at ABC, NBC and CBS declined to be interviewed for this report.
Nothing portends a grand scale, made-for-television confrontation. But anecdotal evidence suggests the broadcast unions are becoming more active in the face of demands for concessions and resistance to organizing.
In Chicago, reporters at Shadow Broadcast Services this month voted by a wide margin for AFTRA representation. Last month, anchors and reporters at CBS-owned WBBM-Ch. 2 and NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5 wore black clothing on the air in protest of bargaining table efforts by CBS and NBC management to allow for the unlimited use of part-time reporters and anchors. “This is not an instance of well-paid people in a glamorous profession seeking a bigger piece of the pie by guaranteeing skyrocketing salaries as the NBA players are doing,” staffers at WBBM and WMAQ said in a statement.
And last week, a regional hearing officer of the National Labor Relations Board recommended a new election sought by AFTRA in its effort to organize CLTV, which is owned by Tribune Co. AFTRA alleged illegal coercion and intimidation by CLTV management in last April’s election, in which some employees narrowly rejected union representation.
Nationally, unions are mobilizing on a plan to try to increase their bargaining power. Members of AFTRA are voting along with members of the Screen Actors Guild on merging the two unions.
In some ways, it is a cumbersome marriage of disparate interests. In other ways, it is a timely merger that recognizes the changing nature of television and entertainment. AFTRA represents broadcasters, journalists and performers who do commercials and voice-overs on television and radio. The 100,000-member SAG includes actors, singers, dancers, puppeteers and stunt pilots.
“Consolidating the two gives you more clout. It’s a question of whether you attack a giant as individuals or join together,” said John McGuire, SAG’s national associate executive director.
“Five or 10 years ago, broadcast ownership was very distinct from motion pictures. Now the same organizations are controlling the broadcasters, the performers and all the major media aspects,” McGuire said.
ABC, CBS and NBC have suffered a dramatic loss of audience. Twenty years ago, 9 out of 10 homes were tuned into the Big Three; now, they have lost about half that audience. Competition from cable has left ABC and CBS marginally profitable, at best. The networks, though, have been positioning themselves to benefit from the competition they bitterly complain about–cable.
Walt Disney Co., the parent of ABC, holds substantial or 100 percent interest in some of the most popular cable channels–A&E, Lifetime, the History Channel and the three ESPN sports channels. Overall, Disney has interests in eight cable channels.
General Electric Co., the parent of NBC, owns interests in seven cable networks and eight regional sports networks, including 100 percent of CNBC and 50 percent of MSNBC. CBS owns the Nashville Network and Country Music Television as part of its six cable networks. News Corp., the parent of Fox, owns all or part of seven cable networks.
At the same time, relaxation of regulations has cleared the way for networks to–for the first time–own and profit from television programs. Deregulation has allowed networks to own more stations which, in major markets, can record profit margins of 35 percent to 50 percent.
But as programming costs have gone through the roof, the economics of running a network have become tighter. The stations may make money, but they have to pay for those higher costs.
“In all of our negotiations we are met with increasing demands for what we consider to be significant concessions, with not much coming back to our members,” said Eileen Willenborg, executive director of AFTRA’s Chicago local. Noting that AFTRA members at WBBM and WMAQ have worked without a contract for more than a year, she said: “I see the profit and loss statements, and they’re making money.”
Bruce York, AFTRA’s national executive director, also says broadcasters are much stronger than they let on at the bargaining table. But he warned that unions are writing “a recipe for disaster” if they do not adjust to some of the technical realities of television that have a direct staffing impact.
In Chicago, Dick Kay, president of the AFTRA local, said in a phone interview that the union is not seeking a confrontation with management, but said the proposed unlimited use of so-called “per diem” reporters and anchors, who would not receive company benefits or operate under the union contract, is a serious threat to staff reporters and to the stations’ efforts to establish and maintain viewer loyalty.
“What’s the point of having staff reporters? If they can shift to daily hires, why sign staff contracts?” asked Kay, a WMAQ reporter and political editor.
Larry Wert, president and general manager at Channel 5, declined to discuss negotiations with the Chicago AFTRA local or specific economic pressures on the networks. But he offered this observation: “You can’t expect the status quo when the viewership pattern is not the status quo.”
Kay, reflecting on his 30 years at WMAQ, said contracts used to be all about salaries. “But that’s never an issue now. We are,” he said, “an industry in transition.”
