VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[todd ellis]

annnnnd, how do we feel about this?
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Bruce]

This is probably in response to the Voice Casting Hub which has been created by the Voice Acting Alliance which was created by what I believe are many of the good guy talent agencies in the country. Here's what Erik Sheppard of the Voice Talent Productions agency had to say about it this morning:

[Bob Bergen]

This is what I have been saying will happen the day the acquisition was announced.

Voicebank was always used for union work, as well as non union. When every agent in the country got the same Vbank copy, this was done when the buyer just sent to everyone. This was done more out of laziness rather than as a smart business strategy. OR it was done by a buyer who knew not what they were doing, and when they got the 100s of submissions would realize the next time around they need to be a bit more discriminating when it comes to choosing which/how many agents to submit to.

But in the larger markets, buyers on Vbank would more often than not just send to a handful of agents, the same number they would send to before the days of Vbank when the copy was faxed to the agents. Larger CDs who no longer have brink and mortar offices use Vbank to distribute copy. But again, the major CDs send to just their go to agents, not to agents all over the country.

VDC will just do the same thing. And it is not possible for there to be any undercutting on these union jobs. We have a collective bargained agreement with these union buyers, and the distributer of the copy legally cannot be anything other than a distributor. Just like a CD casting a union job can only act as a CD, and may not charge the actor or the agent an additional fee. Nor can they negotiate the rate on behalf of the actor with the buyer. There are very clear cut standards, guidelines, and protections. Union talent cannot be charged to audition. They cannot pay more than 10% commission to their agent. They cannot pay commission to any other entity. And for many contracts, the buyer must pay plus 10%, so the commission does not come out of the actor's pocket.

It's the non union world still using VDC who have no protections. And again, as I said at the time of acquisition, they are the ones who need to be concerned.

From what I understand, the people behind VDC met with all of the LA agents. The LA agents also met together on their own, as they knew the concerns regarding the vo industry and VDC. The agents knew that Vbank itself was also very damaging, but miles better than the past business model of VDC. Therefore, to stay relevant VDC had to adapt a union business model that mirrors Vbank, if they were going to keep the union talent/agents who had been conditioned to use Vbank.

All said, most, if not all of the larger market agents have over the past few months gone back to the good old days of working from their network of buyers on their database (used to be their rolodex) to do business with buyers. And it's been working. Which is what prompted VDC to bend over backwards in an attempt to get that union business back. The agents have been very successful in swaying buyers and CDs to stop using the Vbank business model and once again go directly to the agents. Not all, of course. But enough to make VDC concerned after spending so much money acquiring Vbank.

Basically, time will tell. I also said when all of this went down that this might have been the drastic change in the vo landscape to bring more work back to the union fold. This announcement went out to union members yesterday: http://www.sagaftra.org/joint-statement-sag-aftra-and-joint-policy-committee-broadcast-talent-union-relations-0
It's the first time I have seen the union acknowledge low budget commercial buyers and offer them a way to hire union talent without breaking the bank. Time will tell how this works out in the end as well.

VDC is desperate to do PR damage control. I surfed their site and see (or I couldn't find) an option that listed agents and their talent, the way Vbank does. But Vbank is still online, and still does. I would imagine after some time Vbank will go away and VDC will remain. If VDC was smart they would abandon the VDC name and just use Vbank, as it doesn't have quite the stigma.

Let's see how all plays out.

[Bish]

Thanks Bob. That was fairly comprehensive.

There are two things that concern me. The first is based on VDC's proven track-record of grabbing every last cent they can from a gig. Let's say I'm a client who has a fairly large campaign budget for a VO (let's say $50K)... if the job goes anywhere near VDC, they will find a way of grabbing $30K of that directly and the job will go out as a legitimate $20K union job. Yes, I am over-simplifying, but in essence VDC's practice is to grab the money before it gets to the talent (apart from SurePay and membership fees, that is). They will not see union work with a 10% return as a viable business proposition in the long term. They want all the money (as has been proved).

The second. I was not happy to read the union's position on the low-budget commercials. My read was, "We can't get you to raise rates, so we'll allow our members to work for less" This may well be the pragmatic approach... but I'd stop short of calling it progress... it's more like capitulation.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

[Dan-O]

There are agencies currently in beta testing. Actually instructing VDC the way union jobs work. Tweaking the site for them, and handing over their entire rosters.

How long until history repeats itself and VDC implements a no-contact policy between the agents and the clients. Sure the union jobs come in, but from whom?

How long until VDC says, "You know what? Why do we need a middleman agency? We'll just "manage" the job ourselves and take the 10%."

And all the while, slowly chipping away at the ad agencies tempting them with non-union.

[Bruce]

Bish, I hear your concerns when it comes to VDC's money grubbing (stealing) ways, but in theory they can't do that with a union job.

Here's a thought stream: every role in a union production only has one person who gets that role, out of the thousands who could potentially perform that role. Now, we're used to dealing with these situations:

1) You're signed with one of the 3 or 4 agents who each submit their 5 best out of each agency's 20+ submissions. Whether you get the job or not your chances would have been let's say 1 in 80. And this is trusting it's only 3 or 4 agencies! YMMV.

2) Or it's a Voicebank widely broadcast audition with 100 agencies responding with 500 selected auditions and you're one out of the 2,000 who applied.

3) Or if you're a top talent with great representation or a great reputation you might get picked off of a very short list or even selected directly. (see Philip Banks)

4) Aggressive or clever marketing can also yield results.

For most of us it's been situation #1 or #2 for many years now. How will this situation change? Superficially maybe? It sounds like it's still going to be a 1 in 500 or 1 in 2,000 chance most of the time.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

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