Commercial Shoots Plummet

One month into the strike by actors against the advertising industry, the shooting of commercials is off sharply in Los Angeles as the stalemate between the two sides continues.

Union representatives for the actors say it’s because they have been successful at making a substantial dent in commercial productions with their strike. But the ad industry says that it only means more shooting is taking place outside Los Angeles to avoid picketers.

Statistics released Thursday by the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. show that for the first full month of the strike, only 418 permits were issued to shoot commercials in public in Los Angeles, down 23% from the number issued in May 1999. EIDC President Cody Cluff, who oversees the agency that issues permits to shoot in Los Angeles, predicted it will only get worse.

“I would expect they will be off more than that in June because in May it took a couple of weeks for the strike to gear up,” Cluff said.

The release of the numbers coincides with news that both sides have agreed to exploratory talks this month at the behest of a federal mediator who is hoping to prod both sides back to the bargaining table. The sessions are scheduled for June 13-14 in New York.

Neither side is billing the talks as formal negotiating sessions, and representatives of each remain wary that any serious talks will resume soon. Actors have been aggressively picketing the sites of commercial shoots since the strike began, and are now aiming demonstrations at specific companies, notably AT&T; Corp., that do a lot of advertising.

Representatives of the Screen Actors Guild said the statistics on local shooting shows that producers have been unsuccessful in getting around the strike. They add that even if commercials are shooting elsewhere, it is costing the industry more and is adding to the pressure on companies to resolve the strike.

“For the industry to keep up this ‘business as usual’ slogan is nothing but a charade,” said Greg Krizman, a SAG spokesman. “It’s clearly not business as usual.

But advertising industry and production representatives said the numbers only show that commercial shooting is moving away from Los Angeles to outlying areas to avoid the hassles of the actors’ picket lines. Commercials, they say, are instead being shot in areas such as Vancouver, Canada; Toronto; Prague, Czech Republic; and states such as South Carolina and Arizona with a small number of SAG members.

“We know what producers are doing. A lot of them are just avoiding major production centers. All things considered, there is a lot of work going on,” said Matt Miller, president of the Assn. of Independent Commercial Producers.

Actors represented by SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists went on strike May 1. Both the actors and the ad industry want to restructure the entire pay system for commercials, citing sea changes in the business that has seen a boom in cable television.

Actors are now paid each time a commercial airs on network television, and want to be paid the same way for commercials that run on cable instead of getting a flat fee as they do now.

The ad industry wants to pay a flat fee to actors for all commercials because the fragmenting of audiences means commercials have to run more often to reach the same number of people they did in the past.