Mark Hand is a cross-media content specialist who provides creative writing and consulting services to film and television producers looking to develop cross-media properties. He can be reached at mark@markhand.ca.

One clear outcome of the recent writers strike in the U.S. is that the studios recognized the Writers Guild of America’s jurisdiction over new media. The Directors Guild of America’s negotiations yielded a similar result. Both the unions and the studios are claiming victory, but the real winners in these deals are audiences and the medium itself, because having professional creatives working in new media will only improve the quality of the content and help to usher the medium into its maturity.

In Canada, producers have already acknowledged the guilds’ jurisdiction over content created for new media in existing agreements.

Maureen Parker, executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada, says that the WGA deal is more complicated than the one here. ‘The WGA negotiated for a complete package, and they’ve made gains in several areas, starting with jurisdiction and moving on into minimums and use fees and compensation for streaming,’ she says.

The current Canadian writers deal has no minimums, so all rates and use fees are negotiable.

‘The Canadian marketplace is different,’ she says, but the WGC will be watching income generated by new media in the U.S. ‘More and more of our members are working in new media, and of course we want to make sure that they’re properly compensated.’

Writers are not the only ones paying close attention to the performance of new media as a distribution channel. Other unions are also looking at the deals struck by their American counterparts.

‘The DGA deal is an attempt to tackle issues we’ve all been skirting around,’ says Brian Baker, interim executive in charge of directors’ affairs at the Directors Guild of Canada. Baker says that it’s a huge step for the DGA to win authority over new media, but that it’s still very early to tell how compensation will work.

Baker points to the sunset clause in the DGA agreement that puts the whole deal back on the table once it expires in three years, saying that this indicates uncertainty by both sides concerning revenue numbers and percentages.

When the DGC deal expires at the end of 2009, both sides will seek to improve their position with respect to new media based on the actual revenues they see down south.

‘We know that new media is the future,’ says Baker. ‘We just don’t know when the future will arrive.’

ACTRA, meanwhile, remains happy with its current deal. Canadian actors already enjoy full jurisdiction over new media with no qualifications or thresholds, established minimums for original new media content, and at 3.6% after six months, a higher percentage of distributors’ gross than any other guild.

Stephen Waddell, national executive director for ACTRA, says that unless something big happens with the ongoing Screen Actors Guild negotiations in the U.S., ACTRA is not interested in reopening its deal when the possibility to do so arises at the start of 2009, one year before the agreement expires.

While the SAG contract expires at the end of June, late last month, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the smaller of the two U.S. actors unions, had reached an agreement with the studios. The deal reportedly gives AFTRA members higher fees for downloaded content as well as residuals for ad-supported streams and clips.

The CFTPA declined comment for this story.

Although everyone’s watching to see how much money other people are making through new media, let’s hope they don’t stay on the sidelines for too long. The sooner more professionals start creating original content specifically tailored for online and mobile distribution, the sooner the industry will start reaping real results.

‘Broadcasters recognize the need for professional storytellers,’ says Parker. ‘New media isn’t for people dabbling in their basements anymore – it’s a new format for distributing high-quality storytelling.’

With professional creators free to do what they do best with the confidence that they’ll see fair compensation, the quality of content available on new media channels will greatly improve, and that is what will bring viewing audiences. Once the audiences are watching, then the elusive revenue streams are sure to follow, and when that happens, everyone is a winner.