Los Angeles, CA (June 5, 2003) – The Directors Guild of America and eight of its director members met Wednesday with top studio and network executives to address the problem of late script delivery in television, an issue that undermines the quality of programs and threatens the already delicate financial balancing act for episodic TV.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and the directors agreed during the last round of negotiations early last year to take an industry wide approach to tackle and solve this problem, which affects every aspect of single-camera production. Over the past two years, members of the Guild's Creative Rights Committee who direct single-camera shows have collected data and conducted a series of meetings to discuss with showrunners and producers how to achieve timely script delivery. Among those attending yesterday's meeting at the DGA were DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg and CBS' Leslie Moonves as representatives of the AMPTP and director Steven Soderbergh, chairman of DGA's Creative Rights Committee, and Rod Holcomb, chair of DGA's television committee.
Last Spring, the Guild sent questionnaires to 500 of its members who had directed in the single-camera genre in the past two television seasons. Of the 199 respondents, 80% said they had received at least one tardy script and estimated that half of the scripts they had directed arrived late. To determine the extent of the problem, the DGA began tracking script delivery in the last quarter of 2002 – and that data, which covers a partial programming season, proves the directors' earlier estimate to be on the mark. Nearly half of the scripts (49%) in one-hour television were delivered late; and 20% of these late scripts were late by as many as 7 to 15 days.
Of the 651 episodes studied in the latest survey, 333 were on time – while 318 were late from one to fifteen days. A further breakdown of the data reveals that 179 scripts were late by one to three days, 74 scripts were late by four to six days, and 65 scripts were late by seven to fifteen days.
"Last year, we agreed with the studios that we would begin to gather the data and work together toward changing the culture and addressing the problem" said Holcomb, director of the pilots of such episodic shows as ER and the Education of Max Bickford. "The tracking data reinforces our concerns. We now have hard evidence to back us up – proof that late script delivery has proliferated into an industry-wide problem – and that we need to stop it in its tracks."
Katzenberg expressed appreciation that the Guild has brought this problem to light. "We share the commitment to working with the DGA to remedy the problem of late scripts in television," said Katzenberg. "We'll work with the executive producers, showrunners and writers to take appropriate measures to ensure that shows come in on budget and at their creative best."
In addition to discussing the problem with the industry's top leaders, the DGA has met with writers and team members from individual shows, according to Soderbergh, who also serves as 1st Vice President of the Directors Guild. "There is a need for real improvement in the culture and practices that permit what's happening to directors in television," Soderbergh said. "The lack of preparedness does not just affect the ability of directors to do their jobs but makes work more difficult for the entire cast and crew. It generates perpetual anxiety, budgetary overruns and occupational peril in equal measure."
Attending the meeting from the AMPTP were Howard Davine, Executive VP, Touchstone Television; Ted Harbert, President, NBC Studios; Katzenberg, Principal Partner, DreamWorks SKG; David Kissinger, President, Universal Television Production; Russ Krasnoff, President of Programming and Production, Sony Pictures Television; Gregg Maday, Senior Vice President, Warner Brothers TV Production; Moonves, President and CEO, CBS; Gary Newman, President, Fox Group; and Tom Russo, Senior Vice President, Paramount Network TV.
In addition to Holcomb and Soderbergh, DGA representatives included Paris Barclay, Bob Butler, Charles Haid, Jonathan Kaplan, Elodie Keene and Michael Zinberg.
