RADIO NEWS

CWUSA's repeat fees fight reaches radio

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:59

On the morning of Wednesday, 13 April, Redi Tlhabi hosted a round table discussion on TalkRadio 702 highlighting the Creative Workers Union of South Africa’s (CWUSA) representation of actor Tony Kgoroge, who they say was unfairly dismissed from pay-TV broadcaster M-Net’s new soap, The Wild.

Tlabi invited input not only from CWUSA and M-Net, but from public service broadcaster SABC and commercial free-to-air (FTA) channel e.tv, to ensure that listeners would get a broad view of South Africa’s broadcasting scenario regarding the payment of repeat fees and residuals to actors in local television shows.

CWUSA general secretary Oupa Lebogo said that CWUSA had advised its members who had been cast in The Wild not to sign their contracts. “This is to support our comrade, Tony Kgoroge, who refused to sign the M-Net contract because it would have signed away his exclusive rights, and was then unfairly dismissed. M-Net says Tony was ‘recast’ and not unfairly dismissed. We differ on this point.”

M-Net’s head of Regulatory and Legal Affairs, Karen Willenberg, countered by saying: “It’s been repeatedly said that M-Net doesn’t pay repeat fees or residuals. This is not a fair statement. M-Net’s contracts are a buy-out, so we pay for repeat fees and residuals upfront. The structure of our contracts is different to other broadcasters.

“It is also not correct to say that Tony Kgoroge was unfairly dismissed. The first step in M-Net’s contract process with actors is that we issue a letter of intent to an actor saying we wish to cast him in a production. The second stage is the signing of a cast agreement by the actor. Only when an actor signs the cast agreement is he considered by M-Net to be employed. Mr Kgoroge did not sign the cast agreement and therefore was not employed by M-Net.”

The representative from the SABC made the point that the legislation dealing with the protection of performers’ right, amended in 2002, is not clear. “However, SABC has been paying repeat fees since before that time.”

E.tv’s Mark Rosen spoke at length about how television is a business and how very often industry stakeholders lose sight of that fact. “When e.tv started we had very little local content and we have now grown to have lots of local content as we’ve found that’s what our viewers want. But it’s much more expensive for broadcasters to produce local content than it is to buy overseas programmes. So everything comes down to budget. E.tv does pay repeat fees and residuals but each contract is negotiated according to whether it is a lead role in a show or a supporting role. Extras don’t get repeat fees, but featured artists do.”

For more on this issue see the May issue of Screen Africa.

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