Kelly Crisp was on set with her son Toliver when she got a call from his manager. Toliver was shooting a Spike Lee–directed anti-smoking public service announcement. The boy's manager called to tell Crisp about an email he had just received from Anne Henry, co-founder of the activist group BizParents.org, regarding a new set of regulations for child performers proposed by the New York State Department of Labor. Crisp, a former public prosecutor and professional mediator, returned home and found the same email waiting in her inbox. After reading the new regulations, she was appalled. A month later she founded her own advocacy organization, Child Performers Coalition, with the intent to persuade the Department of Labor to table its proposal."I don't see any of the provisions favoring productions or performers, save a couple of them," Crisp said. "There are a couple of production-friendly provisions, and there really are no child-friendly provisions.
- 1/12/2011
- backstage.com
Here's a look back at Back Stage's top 10 memories:10. Undead DAYTIMEBack in 2009—when the daytime-drama format looked to be going the way of the wild polar bear—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists New York local president Holter Graham sounded a mournful note about the format's future. "The writing was on the wall about daytime and that it was a changing market a long time ago," Graham said. "The economic crisis given to us by the Bush administration sped up that process and made that writing on the wall bright yellow highlighter."That highlighter ink didn't wash away in 2010, but it faded a little. In 2009, CBS announced that its long-running soaps "Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns" would come to an end. This year no such similar announcement came, the networks instead making multiyear commitments to dramas such as "The Young and the Restless" and "Days of Our Lives.
- 12/29/2010
- backstage.com
When the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved passage on Nov. 18 of legislation aimed at battling online content piracy, the road ahead of the bill looked smooth. Champions of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act—among them the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—could boast of broad, bipartisan support and assurances that President Obama would sign the bill into law should it arrive on his desk.By the end of the day, that road was closed. Hours after the Judiciary Committee meeting, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announced that he would seek to block Coica. Senate rules allow individual legislators to place holds on bills."Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," Wyden said. "If you don't think this thing through carefully, the collateral damage would be American innovation,...
- 12/1/2010
- backstage.com
The recession has taken a toll on nearly every trade, and New York's film and TV industry hasn't been spared any fiscal grief. But the Empire State's actors have reason to breathe easier this month. On Aug. 3, the state Legislature passed a measure extending New York's film and TV tax-credit program, allotting $2.1 billion in incentives over a five-year period ($420 million per year) to projects that complete a percentage of their shooting and postproduction work inside state lines. The tax credit comes, at long last, as part of the newly passed state budget, due by April 1 but delayed this year for four interminable months.The tax incentive, which offers a 30 percent rebate on below-the-line expenditures for qualified projects, as well as a 10 percent rebate on postproduction work completed in New York, is nothing new: Funding for the program has been renewed yearly since 2004. But the five-year extension, which guarantees the credits...
- 8/18/2010
- backstage.com
The entertainment community in Hollywood and the Big Apple is expressing relief today that New York state has renewed the 30% tax credit on film and television production for another 5 years through 2015. The Nys budget passed last night and newly signed allocates $2.1 billion to the program, with $420 million given out each annum. There's also $7 million a year set aside for New York-based the post-production and editing industry. Passage of the program came down to the wire: about 18 months ago, Fox's Fringe packed up and moved to Vancouver because the existing program of NY tax credits was too successful and ran out of funds. More money was sprung for it, but uncertainty lingered over whether the program would be funded long-term so reportedly TV producers sought out other locales with tax incentives. SAG’s National Director of Government Relations and Policy Nancy Fox said, “Lawmakers recognized that these tax credits have been...
- 8/5/2010
- by Nikki Finke
- Deadline Hollywood
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