The Washington Times had a story a couple of weeks ago about orchestras and opera companies and new media. Nothing new to those of us who follow such matters, but I was struck by the following:
To cover its members, the musicians union negotiated two successive agreements as a section of the main contract. In 2000, the union signed a "Symphony, Opera, Ballet Audio-Visual Agreement."
But that was before the emergence of Facebook (2003), YouTube (2005) and other platforms. What was needed, said Ms. Newmark, was "really a new model" — hence the "Symphony, Opera, Ballet Integrated Media Agreement" that went into effect in 2009. The new deal has a life-span until 2013, but the agreement "covers numerous technologies and has built-in provisions to take advantage of new technology should it come to the fore."
Negotiating a new agreement, she said, "involved enormous work" — no doubt a euphemism for some heated wrangling, although nobody will say so — because of the bewildering range of new technology.
Media-savvy orchestra insiders will notice the omission of the words "Internet Agreement" from the discussion of new agreements in the article - not to mention the post-dating of the A/V agreement by about 25 years. Given the fear and loathing with which the Internet Agreement was viewed by some AFM staff (and the musicians of a few influential orchestras), that's not surprising. But, as someone involved in negotiating that agreement, I find it disturbing nonetheless.
The Internet Agreement truly was a landmark in our field. An article that appeared on the front page of the business section of the New York Times on June 13, 2000 gives a sense of just why it was so important. Whether it was successful or not is not something that will really be knowable for a while yet, although a fair number of orchestras used it during its lifetime. But many of its basic concepts have been incorporated into subsequent agreements, including the "Symphony, Opera, Ballet Integrated Media Agreement" - an "agreement," by the way, that was neither not a multi-employer collective bargaining agreement in the end nor really "went into effect" in 2009 or any other year. And those concepts were far different than those underlying previous media agreements. For AFM staff to imply that all the heavy lifting and new concepts waited until the discussions underlying the IMA is disingenuous.
Just sayin'.
(cross-posted from The AFM Observer)
Comments