Talent Agencies Evolve to Show Clients the Digital Money
From: MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Talent Agencies Evolve to Show Clients the Digital Money | PBS
Everything about the Ask a Ninja videoblog phenomenon smacks of a new form of entertainment. Two guys in Los Angeles produce a series of simple, low cost video clips where a ninja character answers profound and ridiculous questions. The comedic series gets popular as a video podcast through iTunes, with viewership of 300,000 to 500,000 per episode, and the show’s web presence branches out to include an online store for merchandise.
But when the Ask a Ninja creators, Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, wanted to get serious about making money as entertainers, they went the old school route and hired the behemoth United Talent Agency (UTA). Recently that representation bore fruit as the pair signed on with Federated Media to have the ad network sell advertising on Ask a Ninja in a revenue-sharing deal worth $300,000 per year (if the site maintains its popularity).
“It’s not an accident we’ve set up under a Hollywood model and not a Silicon Valley model,” Nichols told me via email. “UTA is much better at negotiating than I am. And they only make money when we make money, so they are extremely motivated to get us the best deal possible. Creators are never going to have enough clout on their own to negotiate better deals with the YouTubes of the world. We tried making deals without agents and they failed miserably because we didn’t know what to ask for or how to ask for it. Agents save you a lot of time and effort.”
So while YouTube and other popular video sites might make it easier for up-and-coming talent to get noticed — without having to send out a demo reel by mail — there’s still a need for agents and managers to decipher the tangle of contracts and offers from online and offline media outlets. Nichols notes that the Internet might have changed the way video is distributed, but not the way artists can maximize their revenues.
“The key thing that [UTA] gets is that new media is just show business, but without the distributor,” Nichols said. “But show biz is show biz. It’s just contracts and negotiations. That’s what they know, that’s what they do. The technology doesn’t change that — what it does change is the need to go through a distributor. Now two people and a laptop can reach as big an audience as a lot of shows on cable. That is the shift. So we have a show, no distributor, but we still have people that want to engage us in business. And to do that you need to negotiate in a professional and reliable manner. [UTA] takes care of that aspect for us and allows Douglas and myself to concentrate on being funny.”
Way to go Kent!
Via Unmediated.org
posted by MikeSee more in:content creators, talent, videobloggers, videoblogs
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