Symposium on Information Technologies in the Media and Entertainment Industries: Their Impact on Employment, Working Conditions and Labour-management Relations

This report has been prepared by the International Labour Office as the basis for discussions at a Symposium on Information Technologies in the Media and Entertainment Industries. At its 273rd Session (November 1998) the Governing Body of the ILO decided that a meeting would be included in the programme of sectoral activities meetings for 2000-01 on the subject of information technologies in the media and entertainment industries: their impact on employment, working conditions and labour-management relations. At its 274th Session (March 1999) the Governing Body decided that a symposium on this topic should be held in Geneva from 28 February to 3 March 2000, that it should be composed of 63 participants, and that the following 21 countries would be invited to participate: Algeria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was also proposed to place the following countries on a reserve list from which further invitees would be drawn in the event that a government in the first list declined the invitation: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Comoros, Finland, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Saint Lucia, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey and Uruguay.

Furthermore, 21 employer and worker representatives would be selected on the basis of consultations with the respective groups of the Governing Body. The purpose of the Symposium would be to exchange views on selected social and labour issues in the rapidly changing media and entertainment sector (television and radio broadcasting, the film industry, live performance, the media and the publishing and graphical industry), addressing issues such as copyright piracy, employment status, contractual arrangements and social protection, training initiatives and the promotion of social dialogue, in order to elaborate conclusions to provide guidance for the ILO's future work.

This symposium is part of the ILO's Sectoral Activities Programme, which is aimed at assisting governments and employers' and workers' organizations to develop their capacities to deal equitably and effectively with the social and labour problems of particular economic sectors. It is also a means of alerting the ILO to specific sectoral social and labour issues. One of the main ways of doing this is through tripartite meetings and, more recently, symposia, which bring together a cross-section of government, employer and worker representatives from countries that are prominent in a given sector. These meetings are also in line with one of the ILO's four strategic objectives: to strengthen tripartism and promote social dialogue at the international level.

The information for this report was derived from a wide range of sources; however, it should be emphasized that few statistics were available on employment trends in the industries under review. Extensive use was made of various publications, press articles, websites and "grey literature". In addition, valuable information was supplied by ILO member States and employers' and workers' organizations. The report was prepared by John Myers of the Sectoral Activities Department, on the basis of: contributions from a team consisting of Linda Wirth, Brigitte Steck and Tara Bradbury; background papers from Darryl Nelson, Peter Leisink, Garry Neil and Grant Buckler; written contributions from a number of participants to the 1997 Symposium on Multimedia Convergence -- including Jürgen Warnken, Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Germany; Robert Zachariasiewicz, Director of Public Affairs, United States Department of Labor; Walter Durling, Employer Member of the ILO Governing Body and Consejo Nacional de la Empresa Privada de Panamá; and Phil O'Reilly, Executive Director of the Newspaper Publishers' Association of New Zealand; and additional material from Vittorio di Martino (Cross-Departmental Analysis and Reports Team) and Messaoud Hammouya (Bureau of Statistics).

The explosion of ownership and ever-increasing performance capabilities of personal computers, mobile phones and other information communication technology (ICT) devices, the development of satellite, cable and other networks, as well as increased bandwidth, have spawned new forms of distribution through which media and entertainment products and services are made available. The restructuring of the media and entertainment industries and their inclusion in a trend towards an integrated information industry is driven to a large extent by these major developments in technology, for which the term convergence is widely used.⁽¹⁾ This convergence is based on technological innovations in microelectronics, computers and telecommunications. Through digitalization, all kinds of data -- irrespective of origin -- can be manipulated and integrated on the basis of their common informational structure. In addition, the development of optical fibre and satellite technology has created the possibility for rapid transmission of increasing amounts of information per second. The development of integrated circuits and the exponentially increasing capacity of microchips have also been crucial for data communication and integrating different kinds of electronic communication.

The computer and the modem, along with many other ICT hardware and software innovations and services, have placed us at a highpoint of a very significant stage of development in the history of human communications, often called "the information society", and have transformed the way many men and women work in the media and entertainment industries. The foundations of the information superhighway were laid years ago, because its base is the whole system of television, radio, cable, satellites and computer networks, microwave, wireless digital, telephone systems, cellular and mobile radio networks and other systems that transmit information, data, audiovisual material and communications. Every day people receive, store, process, display and send a variety of texts, sound and images, including films, television and radio programmes across the country and around the world. A major challenge is to integrate these diverse and disparate elements into a high-speed, interactive, broadband, digital, seamless whole to complete the highway, ensuring that it reaches all parts of the world where it is needed, and is made available to as many people as possible.

The key to understanding new media is to recognize that the content, delivered on a CD-ROM (compact disc-read only memory), DVD (digital video disc or digital versatile disc), diskette or over a high speed network, must be processed by a computer before it can be used. The innovation at the heart of this is digitalization, the transformation of all kinds of information, sounds and pictures into a uniform system based on the digits one and zero, which can be combined together in an infinite number of ways. Different forms of media have been made more compatible in the process, because they are all reduced to the digital equivalent bits of information.

Digital technology has been around for some time, but the new media revolution really began in the 1990s with the emergence of compression technology, which made it possible to compress, store, manipulate and transmit digital information in previously unheard of quantities. Some recent innovations include: digital interactive television -- viewers choosing their own camera angles for watching certain sporting events and viewing highlights and action replays while the event continues, and performing interactive transactions such as telebanking, shopping for a wide range of products and services from a number of suppliers, and so on; e-books -- digital editions of books downloaded to a personal computer and then loaded into an e-book reader; and MP3 (shorthand for Moving Picture Expert Group Layer 3) compression software -- for "webcasting" (broadcasting on the Internet) and direct sales of musical recordings over the Internet (but this facilitates "pirated" versions being downloaded from websites). MP3 music files can also be stored on computers and replayed on portable players or music systems at almost perfect quality.

In less than a decade, the notion of "information society" has become familiar in industrialized countries, where most people are in frequent contact with ICTs in their daily lives; for instance they process information through networked computers at work, use automated cash dispensers and have the bar codes of consumer articles scanned by shopworkers. These changes are not just hype, but the significance of new electronic media should not be overestimated. Traditional media, including printed media, will not be replaced in the immediate future, and the percentage of the population connected to the Internet is still low. Only 1 per cent of the world's population had an Internet protocol (IP) address in January 1999 -- even in the United States only 11 per cent of the population had one.⁽²⁾ Data on Internet connections also illustrate that Africa, Latin America and major parts of Asia are not connected to the global information economy. With regard to the media and entertainment industries, most industrialized country enterprises have multiple connections with the Internet and use the ICTs extensively, while this would be the exception rather than the rule in developing countries.

What is the outlook for the twenty-first century? Business Week suggests that:

Another commentator observed "The streaming technology has already started a revolution in the way we hear and buy recorded music. It has shaken the foundations of the recording and music industry, and it may well promote new developments in digital television and holography".(4) In a more general sense, multimedia convergence could be leading towards turning the home in many industrialized countries into a much more direct centre of consumption of goods and services than before -- through e-commerce, telebanking, interactive television, the Internet, and so on. This trend towards business based on multimedia convergence lies behind many of the mergers and acquisitions now taking place in the media and entertainment industries.

The impact of information communication technologies and the related synergy effects and increased efficiency "have influenced the numbers and structure of the workforce and significantly changed working conditions and occupational patterns. They have also increasingly -- and this is a relatively new development -- affected the status of workers, especially in recent years. In the medium term, hardly any jobs will remain unaffected by it" (the ICTs).⁽⁵⁾

Technological change in these industries is proceeding at a dizzy pace, such that the previous demarcation lines between publishing, printing, broadcasting and entertainment have become increasingly indistinct. At the same time, these knowledge-based industries are linking with the computer and telecommunications industries in the process of multimedia convergence. The kinds of jobs found in printing, publishing, journalism, film, broadcasting and the performing arts are often unlike those of a decade ago, requiring different skills and changing the status of many workers -- an evolution that will continue in the coming years. Employers in this sector are increasingly likely to be multinational, multimedia conglomerates, while the role of governments has often moved away from direct involvement as an employer in broadcasting, publishing and other areas towards a more distant, regulatory role, and workers are more likely to be in atypical employment and less covered by collective bargaining.

Vastly increased consumption of media and entertainment products and services has been a global phenomenon, affecting even some of the poorest countries, while it is a hallmark of the post-industrial, information-based economy in developed countries. This growth has been tightly interwoven with the introduction and use of ICTs, which have fostered a vast increase in the size of media and entertainment markets by increasing the number and geographical coverage of broadcast TV and radio channels, and by rapidly improving the quality and affordability of equipment ranging from radios, TVs and cassette recorders through to state-of-the-art recording and film studios and digital media of all kinds.⁽⁶⁾ These industries have been very dynamic, often among those at the forefront of the economy in terms of corporate earnings and growth. Indeed, many media and entertainment conglomerates have been able to spread their messages worldwide with great success and speed, in ways which were unthinkable a few years ago.

The Global Information Society has made countries more interdependent, combining rapid deployment of information communication technologies (satellite, cable, broadcasting, telecommunications, Internet) with global economic integration and trade liberalization. However, it is evident that, in many parts of the world,⁽⁷⁾ the reach of such technologies is restricted by factors such as poverty, poor access to the media and communications, low levels of education and skills and inadequate investment as well as by a universal concern to maintain local cultural diversity.⁽⁸⁾ Internet usage in the late 1990s has been estimated at around one in six people in North America and Europe and one in 5,000 people in Africa.⁽⁹⁾ A hope for the future is that improving the quality and coverage of new telecommunications infrastructures in developing countries may be relatively easy and cheap, given that new frameworks could be installed from scratch, whereas industrialized countries will have to update an existing infrastructure that is often ageing, expensive and inflexible.⁽¹⁰⁾ However, the problems of securing adequate computer equipment, maintenance and supplies, ensuring power supply, recruiting trained staff or providing training and identifying suitable business opportunities would remain.

Globalization has accelerated a process of "industrialization of cultures", closely linked to technologies and the formation of global conglomerates involved in media, entertainment and sometimes other industries. Five major record companies dominate the music industry worldwide -- Sony, Warner, Universal, BMG and EMI. The film, broadcasting and media industries are also dominated by major players -- Disney, Time-Warner (including CNN, Fortune, Time, Metro Goldwyn Mayer), News Corporation (including The Australian, The Times, The New York Post, Harper Collins, and many TV and film interests), Viacom, Sony, Bertelsmann, Seagram/Universal-Polygram, Gannett, Kirch, Havas, Vivendi, Fininvest, Pearson and others (see figure 1.1) -- and regional giants like Globo and Televisa in Latin America. These businesses are fiercely competitive and are becoming real power structures in their own right. Their success is often accompanied by the absorption of smaller players, a weakening of national and local enterprises and cultures, a reduction in trade union influence, increasing vertical integration, and growing standardization of global media and entertainment products. The merger of Viacom and CBS (September 1999) is a recent example of cross-sectoral market concentration in media and entertainment, creating a huge conglomerate worth over US$80 billion and with revenues of US$20 billion per year.⁽¹¹⁾ This latter figure represents more than the gross national product of Tunisia, Ecuador, Sri Lanka or Croatia, and dwarfs that of many developing countries.⁽¹²⁾

Beginning in the mid-1980s, technology brought an explosion in the demand for films and television. Around the world, there has been a proliferation of television channels, via cable, satellites and digital microwave technologies. Specialty and pay-television services are commonplace. In North American cities, cable systems provide 100 channels or more, with many niche markets -- news, weather, comedy, sports, and so on; each require content, television programmes and films, often creating work for presenters, journalists, technicians, performers and others. In India (and similarly in every part of the world):

The Internet connects millions of computers worldwide, through which an infinite variety of material flows 24 hours a day. Estimates on how many people are connected to it are in the 200 million range. While it took nearly 40 years for radio to reach 50 million households, and 13 years for televison to reach that mark, the Internet reached that level in only four years. Currently, most Internet traffic is text based, using still photos and more or less sophisticated graphics, because the link to it is usually telephone wires, which are not yet capable of transmitting rapidly the enormous volume of data needed for audiovisual material, and most individuals lack computers powerful enough to recreate quickly the original audiovisual material from the ones and zeros to which it has been reduced. But technology will soon solve these problems. Since 1998, the Internet has become available in many countries through coaxial cables, used for cable television, increasing the system's capacity and speed, or via satellite. More powerful computers are being sold for home use each month. The average personal computer used today has more capacity than the computer which guided the Apollo 11 spacecraft to the first human landing on the moon 30 years ago. When the technological limitations are overcome, a full range of material, including television, films and multimedia -- utilizing the work of journalists, designers, technicians, performers and other media and entertainment workers -- will be available to millions of people worldwide via the Internet.

Even with its current limitations, the Internet is beginning to have an influence on viewing habits. According to a study by Nielsen Media Research, North American households with Internet access watch 13 per cent less television on average than those households that are not on-line,⁽¹⁴⁾ 18 per cent read fewer books and magazines because of the Internet, and 11 per cent said they read fewer newspapers.⁽¹⁵⁾ The same survey reported that, in June 1998, over 70 million Americans, or 35 per cent of the population, were using the Internet.⁽¹⁶⁾

However, in developing countries the story is very different -- in Africa, even radio only reaches around 75 per cent of the population, television less than 40 per cent, and the Internet perhaps 0.1 per cent (including South Africa).⁽¹⁷⁾ Unlike radio and television, the Internet requires a reasonable level of functional literacy and education (often in a foreign language), which is not as prevalent in certain developing countries as in many industrialized countries. In that sense, the Internet is likely to pose less of a direct threat to employment in media and entertainment in developing countries than in industrialized ones. For some developing country enterprises, information technologies have facilitated greater speed and flexibility in production, reduced production costs, and improved the quality of recordings, printed products and the like. Although many firms would be willing to invest in new technologies and to experiment with new methods of production, they are often prevented from doing so by financial constraints.⁽¹⁸⁾

Federico Mayor, former Director-General of UNESCO, observed that the future of democratic societies "will depend in part on the development and strengthening of free, independent and pluralist media in both the public and private sectors, since the spread of knowledge and values is impossible without freedom of communication".⁽¹⁹⁾ He urged "all those concerned to search for common solutions, so that information and communication technologies may be placed in the service of human progress while at the same time guaranteeing a real choice that respects the dignity and freedom of each individual, and so that they may benefit as many people as possible, in both the north and the south, and within each country". The digital technologies also allow specific facilities and services to be offered to certain disadvantaged groups, such as deaf and disabled people.

However, technological developments have sometimes been accompanied by greater attempts to control information, as the speed and range of communication increases (see Chapter 5). Information can be sent around the world in seconds with the new technologies, and news can reach people when it happens. Thus media workers and employers using the information technologies may trouble groups wanting to avoid public scrutiny and this may lead to attacks on journalists and media organizations.⁽²⁰⁾

The development of the Internet, of compression software and other ICT innovations is transforming the economics of the media and entertainment industries significantly, especially because of the low cost of electronic production and distribution. A major barrier to entry to the mass media industries in the past was the huge capital costs involved in such items as printing plants, reproduction of recorded music or films, warehousing, the infrastructure for transmitting printed, broadcast or recorded material to distributors and/or consumers, and so on. With online electronic products, these costs are minimized. Online electronic publishers can use technology to gather, sort and select information more rapidly and effectively. The interactivity of this media and the ability to build up customer and market profiles from information received on the World Wide Web (e-mail addresses, age groups, tastes, spending power and consumption patterns) allows Internet businesses better opportunities to target and adapt their products and services to consumer needs (while respecting consumers' privacy and rights).

For these reasons, traditional print, film, music and broadcasting companies are developing their electronic presence, products and electronic commerce, often keeping close to their original business using a new medium, while new entrants are more likely to offer products or services that are specifically designed for the Internet. However, Internet customers cannot "handle" a product before they buy it as they would do in a shop; electronic products copied from the Internet do not have the "commodity feel" of a book, compact disc, newspaper, magazine or video cassette; the Internet reaches only a (growing) fraction of the world's population; and the services it provides may be more appropriate in one country or niche market than another.

E-commerce, as trading via the Internet is known, has been a very significant development for media and entertainment businesses -- the development of websites that sell books, videotapes and music compact discs direct to customers (using credit card and other payment facilities) has generated new demand for printed and recorded products -- underlining that the Internet is not only selling access to online services. Indeed, in 1999 nearly 7 per cent of the combined population of Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and the United States were reported to buy goods through the Internet, and books and compact discs accounted for about half of all purchases.⁽²¹⁾ The share of online sales in 1999 was dominated by "Internet-only" retailers in the fields of books (87 per cent) and music and videos (69 per cent), whereas the average was 38 per cent, the remainder of online sales being by catalogue and shop retailers,⁽²²⁾ and the market is evolving rapidly. Record companies now operate promotional Internet sites as a standard part of their marketing activities, but the industry will not be able to fully exploit the Internet's commercial potential until digital versions of recordings can be sold directly to consumers, who would download them within minutes on to their computers, using MP3 compression software (but with the attendant risk of "pirated" music being downloaded from websites). It is assumed that roughly 8 per cent of all global sales (US$3.9 billion) will be sold over the Internet by 2002. But that raises one of the biggest problems of the new technologies, affecting all the media and entertainment industries: piracy (see Chapter 7).

For copyright holders (publishers, film and record companies, performers, writers, and so on), the Internet provides new ways of protecting, trading and collecting income from their intellectual property, using databases, digital watermarking and other ways to keep track of the ownership and use of their material, and to clamp down on copyright infringement. Payments to copyright holders could increase substantially from the new uses of material (Internet, satellite and cable television, etc.), if piracy can be combated effectively. However, the new copyright protection systems are likely to be used primarily to protect the interests of large companies and well-known performers and writers; the benefits that may accrue to small firms and poorly paid performers and writers are likely to be small or non-existent, unless new agreements or legislation can be developed to share benefits more equitably.

In relation to business performance in these industries, one observer commented that: "Viewed through the prism of the stock market, this is not the best of times to be a traditional media enterprise. While new media companies such as America Online rise from strength to strength, the old ones look on enviously."⁽²³⁾ Internet portals offering consumers an entry point to the Internet (including the possibility to download text, music and images) bounded ahead in 1999. On the other hand, for many broadcasting and publishing companies 1998 and 1999 have been uninspiring years. For consumer publishing, the threat to prosperity comes not only from the electronic media but also from recession and other factors. The challenge for broadcasters is less to defend themselves against new technologies or external threats than to make their mark in the world of digital technology.⁽²⁴⁾

The emerging technologies have provided a wealth of opportunities for creating new forms of expression and developing new creative products and services; others will arise in the coming years. These can provide new outlets for media and entertainment enterprises, content providers, performers and their works. When used to describe such products, new media covers three categories:

(a) Enrichment of traditional forms of communication, such as high definition television and digital broadcasting, new formats for music and video recording, interactive television, database publishing on the web, and so on.

(b) Combinations of previously separate media, often called multimedia. The multimedia presentation typically combines text, pictures, graphics, data and animation, and sometimes sound, music and full motion video in forms that encourage or require the user to interact with the material in a manner not permitted by the "old media". Video games and online newspapers are examples of such a combination. The consumer of the material has a range of options to utilize the material, instead of proceeding (either forward or in reverse) along a predetermined path.

(c) Entirely new products, including hypermedia, which interrelate material in even more dynamic multidimensional forms; and virtual reality, which permits the user to enter a three-dimensional audiovisual environment.

Some relatively new fields in media and entertainment -- closely related to film, broadcasting and publishing -- have become industries in their own right, such as interactive and multimedia software publishing. Games, narrative and similar products for CD-ROMs, the Internet and other electronic formats (Nintendo, SEGA, PlayStation) have created many jobs for actors, narrators, voice-over artists, singers, stunt performers, dancers, editors, graphic designers and others.⁽²⁵⁾ Hypermedia and other new areas could develop in a similar way.

As multimedia is the converging of previously distinct media, new skill sets are often required,⁽²⁶⁾ and producers and distributors of new media products are emerging from a variety of backgrounds. Some very successful CD-ROM titles have been developed by book publishers, especially reference works where publishers have added sounds, narration, animation and full-motion video to create the next generation of encyclopaedias, dictionaries and atlases. This is also true for children's titles, since production values of audio and video material need not be of top quality.

New media developers are also springing up from the computer and software industries. Many popular CD-ROMs over the past decade have been video games, developed by an industry which did not exist before then. Software companies are expanding their scope and creating entertainment products. New media development companies have emerged everywhere, and most industrialized countries have their own "Silicon Valley".

Some film and television producers are also creating new media products directly, although most of the activity so far involves adding value to existing works. All of the leading production companies have new media divisions seeking ways to exploit their products -- computer games related to Disney films are an obvious example. Generally, however, film and television producers have not yet begun to produce projects specifically for new media formats, seeing these as ancillary markets.

Of the thousands of interactive titles available worldwide, only a few have sold even a million copies, which is not many compared to the normal "mass market" for other cultural productions, including books, records, magazines and films. Most CD-ROM titles are still bundled as a package with the sale of the computer itself.

The pace of technological change is such that new media products are often superseded within a few months of being launched, whether by upgrades from the same supplier or better products from a competitor. In general, media and entertainment goods have high initial fixed costs of production and low costs of reproduction, and for electronic products the production and distribution costs are often very much lower than those associated with their traditional media counterparts (printed matter, cassettes, and so on). The Internet provides a low-cost promotion and distribution mechanism that attracts a huge and ever-growing number of consumers, so that electronic products can be sold more easily, and performers and writers can produce and sell their own material. New equipment for using these products has come on to the market (for example e-books and Rio or other MP3 music players) and unencrypted material can be reproduced and sold relatively cheaply. This poses a major threat to book and record shops and distributors, to printers and other related industries, as well as to music and publishing businesses, and perhaps a mixture of threat and opportunity to writers and performers. In most cases, businesses find that they have to be much quicker in launching new products and reacting to competitor initiatives than was the case a decade or so ago.

The growing world dominance of the United States media and entertainment industry⁽²⁷⁾ has had many specific effects, among which has been the pre-eminence of English as the lingua franca of the Internet and audiovisual production, leading to a growing demand for workers who can also speak English, for translators, and more especially for actors who can perform dubbing work, especially in animation.⁽²⁸⁾

Many of the observations made above are at great variance with the realities of poor countries, where the ICTs have been slower to affect society and the economy. For example, in the graphical industry in most developing countries (with the exception of a few top companies), the technologies in use are considerably older than those in industrialized country firms; furthermore, computers are still not universally available, Internet connections are even rarer and digital printing is virtually unknown. Penetration by the media has been mainly limited to urban areas and affluent and educated consumers.⁽²⁹⁾

2. General impact of information
technologies on processes, on content
and on the role of government in the
media and entertainment industries

In the past 20 years, broadcasting has been transformed from a fairly clearly defined, often state-owned or subsidized, national public service sector into a multinational business more focused on commercial success. Major broadcasters often straddle the media, entertainment, film and other industries (software, construction, telecommunications, utilities, etc.), and many are reaping benefits from multimedia convergence. Meanwhile, there has been a huge growth in small independent television production companies, and significant changes in the radio industry in terms of numbers and types of stations, sound quality, ease of reception and employment. Outsourcing and globalization are increasingly important. Broadcasting has been at the forefront of many technological changes, notably in digitalization, in enhancements to existing services (in radio broadcasting for example, digital technology now permits listeners to obtain traffic news and news while listening to a cassette, CD or another radio station; to enhance tuning; and to display the name of the station, etc.) and in new ways of selecting what to broadcast and how to charge consumers for such services.

A whole host of new technological developments have occurred in broadcasting in recent years, including the rapid development of fibre optic cable networks around the world (for the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, a new cable connecting over 25 countries in four continents was laid), and in specific countries the establishment of pay-per-view for sporting, cultural and other programmes, further expansion of satellite technology and infrastructure, wide-screen high-definition digital picture quality, and so on. More directly affecting employment, there has been a transition from slow, complicated and unreliable electro-mechanical broadcasting equipment to digital equivalents that have provided major efficiency benefits and tended to strengthen the employer's hand in labour-management relations.⁽¹⁾ Digital broadcasting and digital cable have begun to be deployed in North America and Europe. Fibre optic cable and other technologies will permit the transmission and reception of greater quantities of data; the expansion of computing capacity will enable consumers to download and recreate it from the digits to which it has been reduced. Consequently, ever greater choice will be available to consumers. Digital cable and alternative technologies such as digital microwave systems allow consumers to send return signals to programme suppliers, opening additional possibilities. The integration of the computer with the home entertainment system and the next generation of television screen will combine with the return signal capability to provide full on-line interactivity and true video-on-demand (VOD), which permits the consumer the freedom to order any film or programme at home at any time. In Canada, the broadcast regulatory authority has licensed several companies to provide VOD services in anticipation of the deployment of digital cable. Such systems will provide a fundamental challenge to local video shops, since consumers will be guaranteed access and will not need to incur even the cost of the trip to the store. Digital interactive television now allows viewers to choose their own camera angles for watching football and certain other sporting events and to view highlights while the action is still continuing; interactive commercial transactions and banking facilities are available to viewers via television.

In general, multimedia convergence, industrial concentration and new organizational management approaches have all fostered the integration of film and television production (especially in the United States) rather than having separate structures -- and this has had negative employment implications for certain categories of staff in broadcasting and film.

In the television and radio industries, satellite and cable broadcasting technology now allows far more channels, which can be received in many different countries at once, often in non-local languages; these factors have had a major impact on advertising, competition, programming and staffing (and also on language and culture) in many broadcasting companies. The International Federation of Actors (FIA) reports that much satellite and cable programming consists of old television series, foreign programmes, sport and films, and that there has been little new investment in original production by cable and satellite companies. Thus work opportunities for performers, apart perhaps from those in the United States, Canada and Australia, may differ little from those available before cable and satellite,⁽²⁾ but there are significantly more openings for media workers -- presenters, journalists, technicians, producers and others -- with these new channels.

Broadcast journalists need to learn to use various database-driven content management systems, as well as applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark, especially when working across several media. Radio production journalists using these applications are now often responsible for producing scripts ready for air and audio ready for transmission, undertaking work previously done by people whose jobs have disappeared, like studio managers. Television production journalists are still more reliant on technical support, mainly because the electronic news production systems (ENPS) technology for TV is behind that of radio. Nevertheless, television crews have been scaled down; journalists now go out with just a camerawoman/man. With more broadcast outlets -- radio and digital TV, a World TV channel, an on-line news service, and analogue services -- reporters can be asked to file versions of stories for many more outlets than previously.

A senior broadcast journalist in the United Kingdom, Trevor Goodchild, recently commented that:

Some employers argue that individual journalists are acquiring new skills that make them more employable if they want to work elsewhere.

However, the journalists' unions tend to argue that most broadcasting organizations have pushed this development too far, opting for levels of journalist staffing of individual bulletins and programmes that are too low, and that employers have not passed on the benefits of increased productivity to the journalists. They believe such issues would be taken up in a broad agenda, also covering safety and health (especially stress and repetitive strain injury). One journalist observed that he sometimes had to produce stories for three different media (radio, TV and the Web) tripling the length of time to work to file, ending up editing late at night, needing to be a jack of all trades. It can be a strain doing so many different jobs, and employers are starting to realize they are not getting the best out of journalists this way.⁽⁴⁾

The tremendous growth in income from advertising or other sources in certain broadcasting companies that have expanded using the ICTs has permitted very high salaries for certain celebrity actors, comedians and other personalities, but salaries for performers at lower levels do not appear to have risen at the same rate. Referring to the defection of certain top performers to another company, Alan Yentob, the BBC's director of television, stated "the BBC aren't against paying a fair price for talent and shows, but we are not to be taken for granted. There needs to be some give and take ... Why should any company use the BBC to grow and nurture their acts and then at the optimum moment go to the highest bidder?"⁽⁵⁾

The role of governments in regulating broadcasting has also evolved considerably in recent years, though it varies widely from country to country and is strongly influenced by political, religious, moral, commercial and other considerations. For example, the British Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, announced plans in September 1999 for major legislation to reform the regulation of television programming for the digital era. Government regulation would continue in areas such as ensuring impartiality of news, conducting research into viewers' concerns and a "watershed" time in the evening, before which programmes and other material considered unsuitable for young children and others would not be permitted. Previous content regulations by government laid down the amount of time commercial broadcasters had to allot to drama, local news, children's programmes, religious and factual broadcasting. If broadcasters failed to comply with such regulations, sanctions could be imposed -- ranging from public warnings to fines and even the withdrawal or curtailment of their licence.⁽⁶⁾ Mr. Smith challenged the industry "to work together to bring consumers attractive services and affordable equipment so that the whole country can and will switch to digital"⁽⁷⁾ television by 2010, and hoped that it would be possible soon after the switch-over to digital to be able to "guarantee as part of the core package of services that every [British] home with a television and a phone could have access to the Internet".⁽⁸⁾

The Economist argued that: "Established broadcasters everywhere have a similar problem: once they owned the airwaves, but now channels are multiplying, costs are rising because of competition for talent, and the broadcasters' revenues are not rising as fast. Since many of them are state owned, governments all over the world face a dilemma: whether to spend more on them, starve them, or turn them over to the private sector."⁽⁹⁾ The choice has been made more stark by the success of huge media companies offering pay-television channels around the world and of national commercial broadcasting firms. Government funding is now much less likely to go towards preserving state-owned broadcasting than for financing individual projects or a public service channel. Governments have often sold part or all of their holdings in broadcasters, while retaining some control over standards, content, ethics and the like.

In Greece, public broadcasting has been highly politicized, with varying degrees of political interference and manipulation by successive governments, according to the Vice-President of POSPERT, the Greek Broadcasting Workers' Federation. The process of deregulation began in the late 1980s -- the 1989 law on radio and television broke the state monopoly -- and in 1999 there were more than 25 private TV channels and three public stations. As in many other countries, there is a perceived need to promote vigorous and independent public broadcasting, less affected by political intervention than in the past.⁽¹⁰⁾

In Argentina in 1999, concern about changes to the broadcasting legislation in relation to radio stations was expressed by community groups and others. Indeed, a new law intended to create competition among radio broadcasters by selling frequencies to the highest bidder would effectively exclude stations run by public sector or popular groups and organizations. Around 70 community radio stations might have to close down.⁽¹¹⁾

In the United States until 1994, government restrictions on radio station ownership prevented broadcasters from owning more than two stations in a single market. With the deregulation of the industry, allowing firms to own up to eight stations in one market, there have been many mergers and acquisitions, with fewer purely radio operations. This has been accompanied by considerable growth of mixed-media companies (like CBS and Chancellor Media, which were estimated to have revenues of US$1.5 billion and US$1.6 billion, respectively in 1998) that sell advertising space on radio, television and billboards in one transaction. Gross advertising revenues for radio in 1998 were expected to be US$20 billion.⁽¹²⁾

Similar restrictions apply to television -- a company is only allowed to control one broadcast network, and the collection of regional and local television stations held by one group is not allowed to exceed 35 per cent of the American audience. However, the rules on ownership of two networks were relaxed in August 1999 and calls were made to remove the 35 per cent cap. Both rules would affect the proposed merger of Viacom and CBS in September 1999.⁽¹³⁾

In July 1999, the European Commission launched a formal investigation into the financing of public broadcasters in Italy and France as a result of complaints from private broadcasters that public television companies were undercutting them as a result of capital injections, subsidies, tax exemptions, and so on. The Commission has been under pressure from private broadcasters to clarify rules when public stations can outbid their private rivals for certain kinds of programming, or undercut advertising rates.⁽¹⁴⁾

Among the major issues for the future are: further privatization; regulations on content, programme balance, discrimination, fostering competition and restricting monopolistic behaviour, freedom of expression and access to the media, responsiveness to consumer demand; the effects of technology and restructuring on employment and working conditions, especially freelancers; the role of advertising in broadcasting; and the question of who should provide training -- the industry or the individual.

The film industries in many countries note a marked negative impact on their success and competitiveness in relation to the growing penetration of American-made films, which can be attributed to globalization, the ICTs, superior marketing, the ability to attract the best talent from around the world to their studios, the growing dominance worldwide of a culture closely connected to the United States' media and entertainment industries, and so on. The film industries of India, Mexico, Hungary, France, South Africa, Brazil and others all observe that cinemas in their countries are showing increasing numbers of dubbed American-made films, while fewer locally produced films can compare in terms of box office success.⁽¹⁵⁾

In India, "Bollywood"(the centre of the Indian film industry in Mumbai employs more people than Hollywood) is one of many film production centres in the world's largest film-producing country, but the number of films produced per year has been falling (from 948 in 1990 to 697 in 1997),⁽¹⁶⁾ partly due to the fact that severe restrictions on film imports have been relaxed in recent years, allowing American and other foreign films greater ease of access. Technologies have had less impact on employment in India than elsewhere, as the pay among "daily rate workers" is low and the unions have a say over the introduction of technologies and over employment issues.

As noted earlier, the American film, television and entertainment industries are major net exporters and very significant contributors to the economy, setting standards for consumers around the world, and are unrivalled in size or volume of exports;⁽¹⁷⁾ however, many workers in Hollywood find that their job opportunities have dwindled owing to film industry investment being concentrated on a few blockbusters and an increasing trend towards "runaway production" -- producing films elsewhere than the United States for economic reasons.⁽¹⁸⁾

Technological developments have permitted such production innovations as: remote dubbing of voices and soundtracks for films and television; simultaneous recording of music by performers in studios in different countries onto a single track; and synchronization of visual effects and musical score being prepared at the same time on opposite sides of the Atlantic, using ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network) lines and other networks. The film industry has been able to move away from traditional spools of film for projection in cinemas towards digital transmission of electronic master copies directly to the cinema.

The 1990s has seen the explosion of uses of film in supplementary markets, the growth of new supplementary markets worldwide and the release of material in other formats. Perhaps the first of these was the computer CD-ROM, which permits interactivity with the user; but its capacity is insufficient for feature-length films and its use for films and television shows has not been extensive. The more current technology is DVD (digital video disc or digital versatile disc), capable of delivering digital quality pictures and sound for a full-length feature film with enhanced features -- such as alternate versions, other languages, notes and biographies of participants and "surround sound". Many major films are now released on DVDs.

Multimedia convergence, industrial concentration and new organizational management approaches have all tended to encourage the integration of film and television production rather than having separate structures, with a negative impact on employment for certain categories of staff; despite this trend, overall employment figures have improved substantially in many countries. Processes have been altered to accommodate the development of computer special effects and the possibilities of producing animation, soundtracks and other elements in different countries from the one in which filming takes place. A transition from slow, complicated and unreliable electro-mechanical camera and sound equipment to digital alternatives has increased efficiency and tended to weaken the trade unions in labour-management relations (because of changes in workload, skill sets and employment in the industry).

A further development, from the late 1980s onwards, has been the emergence of "supplementary markets" as a term in the North American film industry and collective bargaining agreements. In addition to the new television markets domestically and internationally, products have been distributed for use on aircraft, video cassettes for sale or rental to individuals, closed-circuit use such as hotels and apartments, direct-to-home broadcast satellites, and others. This has had some influence on processes and content -- with the content sometimes slightly differing depending on the market, including additional footage or the deletion of scenes deemed inappropriate for family viewing.

The traditional government role in the film industry was often one of censorship or approval of films, encouragement or restriction of local film companies or foreign imports, promotion of the national film industry and national content, and sometimes direct financing of films. Now governments tend to be less directly involved, and some of their previous functions are now performed by independent bodies. Many governments have set up one or more film commissions -- especially in the United States, Canada and Australia -- to promote the use of their locations, production facilities and labour by film companies, whether local or foreign. Some provide tax rebates and discounts, others may provide some of the finance for a film. In some countries like South Africa, the local film industry would be unable to survive without investment by foreign film companies.⁽¹⁹⁾ In addition, globalization and information communication technologies have facilitated "runaway production" of American films in other countries -- especially Canada. However, changes in exchange rates or other factors often lead to moves to other locations, making it dangerous for any national film industry to base its long-term future on enticing runaways.

Indeed, a special congressional subcommittee of the Entertainment Industry Task Force was set up in July 1999 to address the crisis of runaway production, aiming to produce legislation and offer pro-business and job-creation incentives for film and television production in the United States.⁽²⁰⁾

The French Government has expressed its wish for a "cultural exception" to the principle of free trade, with specific reference to the film industry, and has argued in favour of a balance between French, American and other films being released in French cinemas. This discussion is likely to feature in the forthcoming World Trade Organization talks about a proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services in 2000 (see Chapter 8).

In France, film producers registered with the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC) can obtain an annual subsidy based on a percentage of the levy by the CNC on all films released in France in the year -- payable only for reinvesting in new film production or reimbursing debts on a previous film.⁽²¹⁾

Live performers (actors, singers, dancers, variety artists, announcers, hosts, puppeteers, stunt performers and others) bring to life artistic visions expressed in scripts, compositions, mimes or sketches, fulfilling the vision and giving it new meaning, or leaving it dormant. They also work in other media, such as broadcast entertainment, television commercials or films. However, in many countries the live arts sector is the largest employer of performers and the one in which they can expect to earn most of their income -- not because the work is better paid than in broadcasting or film, but simply because there are more work opportunities in live performance.⁽²²⁾

As performers are generally self-employed (freelance or independent contractors), throughout a given year they will work for several producers (engagers, employers) and have periods during which they are not working. Those who work on long-running television series may be engaged on long-term, ongoing contracts, but in most Western countries they retain self-employed status for other legal purposes.

Performers may find that the need for a performance is diminished once recorded, but recording live performances often generates interest in live entertainment. And there will always be audiences -- studio recordings are simply not the same, for performers or the general public.

In many countries, performers have an ongoing economic interest in their work, because others gain from the value they add to a work and because they can be competing with themselves. This economic interest can take the form of residual, repeat or royalty payments.

Musicians' employment relates more to the sound recording/music industry than to the film and television industry. However, although they have different employers and are represented by their own distinct trade unions in most countries, musicians share many perspectives of other performers on new media developments.

Until the twentieth century, the performer's work was ephemeral, existing at one place and time, and efforts to organize performers into trade unions had occurred only in a few countries. When the recording of sights and sounds became available in many places simultaneously, the world changed, and performers had to learn new skills to succeed. Whole new categories of performance emerged. Some individuals failed to make the transition to recording, or subsequent transitions -- from silent pictures to "talkies" for example. The recorded media brought new challenges for performers and their unions. Some unions representing live performers saw these developments as a threat or considered that the performers involved were less skilled, and did not seek to represent the new sector; others expanded their mandate to include them.

As a general rule, live entertainment uses relatively little in the way of ICTs, with the exception of computer-based musical instruments, and systems for scene-shifting, lighting and giant television monitors displaying, for example, close-ups of the performance or subtitles of opera lyrics in the theatre itself. A striking example of the conjunction of live entertainment and information communication technologies was the Net Aid concert held on 9 October 1999 in London, Geneva and New York, which was transmitted by television and the Internet. The live performance was supplemented by an interactive element available on computers, allowing viewers to find further information concerning the event and the fundraising beneficiaries over the Internet.

Worldwide, performers have a vital stake in the development of the Internet. Since the early days of the World Wide Web, Internet browsers have been able to obtain a digitally perfect copy of a variety of radio and television materials, although entire audiovisual programmes remain rare. Most of the world's largest producers and broadcasters maintain websites, primarily for promotional purposes and the sale of merchandise related to their productions. However, it is possible to download film trailers and samples from the latest musical recordings. Some independent film producers are using the Internet to distribute their latest short films. MP3 technologies may soon establish the Internet as a viable distribution system for the latest musical works, bypassing traditional music distributors and record stores, although a similar development for audiovisual material is not on the horizon given the substantially larger volumes of data required to transmit it.

Performers have a stake in both aspects of new media -- new methods of distribution and new creative products. Existing programming in which performers appear receives new life from these developments, and the producers/developers have new distribution channels to make the work available. Performers are called upon to act, sing, narrate and otherwise perform in productions created specifically for these new formats and emerging market-places.

With regard to musicians, the development of computer systems that are played for purposes of live performance and recording sessions has diminished the demand for live and session performers, reduced the musical skill requirements for obtaining work, and had a negative impact on the professional status of musicians. But there is another side to the coin; this development has also permitted a wealth of musical innovation, and it is likely that many performers will enhance their work opportunities by adopting or adapting to the new computer-based equipment. Digital recording techniques have greatly enhanced the recorded sound quality of live musicians, whether in the studio or the concert hall, and this can provide additional income for performers and music companies selling such live recordings.

Jamaican music has had a huge international following -- and a great success for British, American and other recording companies, rather than for the country of origin of the music. This may be partly attributed to the fact that Jamaican manufacturing processes were largely confined to vinyl records (and cassettes to a lesser degree), while CDs have long had a dominant position in global markets.⁽²³⁾ Jamaican companies and recording studios cannot compete effectively with their multinational counterparts in terms of studio technology, distribution networks, corporate power, fees to musicians, marketing and other factors.

Reported earnings of performers have generally grown over the past decade beyond the levels of the collectively bargained fee increases; between 1988 and 1998 pay in the recorded media rose by 54.4 per cent in the United States (Screen Actors Guild -- SAG) and by 119.5 per cent in Canada (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists -- ACTRA). It is important to note that these figures are based on submissions made to the pension and health plans operated by the unions. Accordingly, certain amounts received by performers are not included. For SAG, there is a cap on the earnings for which contributions are required on a given film, thus substantial payments made to the leading performers are excluded. This would generally understate the residuals paid, since the cap would be exceeded on the initial payments to these stars -- while they receive residual fees, no pension and health contributions are required on these amounts.

While there was growth in both original production and residual fees, the latter rose faster, meaning that performers are receiving relatively more for the circulation and reuse of their work, brought about by the explosion in demand for material. SAG negotiated its first residual formula in 1960 requiring payment for theatrical films released to television. Since 1991, it has collected data on earnings which separate payment for the original recording -- including the initial uses of the work (session fee) -- from payments for additional uses (residual fee), as shown in table 2.1. Other unions do not have equivalent data for a variety of reasons -- some have no data on members' earnings or no information beyond the minimum fees provided in the agreements; others do not separate collection between original and residual fees.

Table 2.1. Income from theatrical and television production, United States, 1991-98 -- Screen Actors Guild (thousand US$)


	1991	1998	Growth (%)

Session fees	485 303	701 606	44.6
Residual fees	171 642	264 748	54.2
Source: SAG website, on http://www.sag.org, retrieved 25 August 1999.

In ACTRA's Independent Production Agreement, there is a benefit to producers who prepay for certain use rights at the time of production. The fees for each market are lower than if the producer decides later to exploit the work in that particular market. Accordingly, the fees received by the performer at the time of production are a mix of session and use fees. An official of the British Actors' Equity Association agreed that similar pay trends to ACTRA and SAG exist for its members. Australia's Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance noted that members' earnings have not shown a similar pattern of growth in the decade, because of the removal of a preferential tax credit programme which generated record production levels in the 1980s, and the deregulation of content rules for the production of commercials. However residuals are a significant issue in collective bargaining in all four countries.

In North America, payment for use in supplementary markets generally requires a royalty or a share of the producer's receipts divided among eligible performers, since the markets are immature and the economic potential unclear. The leading agreements stipulate that 3.6 per cent of the distributor's gross revenues are provided to performers, divided among all performers in residual categories based on a formula which factors the time spent actually working on the production and the original fee received, with a maximum preventing one or two performers from receiving most of the royalty.

Performers are involved in enhancing existing films and television programmes for release in various formats, when adding sub-plots, dubbing, alternate endings or a new voice-over component. When producers film additional scenes or footage at the time of production to permit the interactive component to be added subsequently, this has brought additional work for performers. However, the use of existing films and television programmes for interactive distribution remains more in the nature of trials and there has not been a significant impact on performers' earnings.

One of the more mature segments of new media production which uses performers is the production of live action sequences for computer/video games. Virtually every performers' union in industrialized countries has some experience in this field. While no solid figures are available, anecdotal evidence suggests such production has brought some new opportunities for stunt performers worldwide and is growing in importance in Japan, but for most it remains a relatively isolated occurrence. In 1993, the Screen Actors Guild successfully negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement for interactive productions in the United States, which covers live action segments of video games, production for release directly onto CD-ROMs, and so on. Earnings under this Agreement in 1998 were roughly US$1 million, less than 0.06 per cent of the US$1.57 billion total reported earnings in SAG's jurisdiction.

Digital television will require new production, but this will have little direct impact on the performer, since the fundamental role will not change and this production will largely replace traditional technologies like videotape. Additional work will be required to film the scenes in a fully interactive production, the script for which may be five times as long as typical film or television scripts; however, this will be offset by increasing use of computer-generated images and performances. Differences and nuances exist where rights for performers are established by law versus rights in contract, and between contractual rights accorded or supported by law and those which are purely voluntary. In new media production, the interests of performers and producers may diverge significantly since -- unlike in the use of existing material -- producers have substantial control over the process. Generally, rights provided by law improve the performer's position, although this is not always true. Where collective bargaining takes place pursuant to the country's labour laws, labour boards may certify the performer unions as the bargaining agent and require negotiations.

Despite the lack of significant concrete experience on the part of performer unions with new media productions, some general observations can be made:

(a) Developers in new media often have low budgets in comparison to mid-range feature films or smaller television dramas. They have insecure and uncertain markets, with distribution occurring through book, record, computer or video stores. Many have little or no experience with trade unions and are in an industry which has generally poor labour practices. There is certainly no experience with the concept of ongoing economic rights. Even where a large multinational is ultimately responsible for distribution, a small company is likely to be contracted to develop the work and engage performers. There is uncertainty about which associations represent the interests of the new media developers. Some developers have links to traditional film, television and publishing companies, whose associations can and do represent their interests, including in collective bargaining. In most countries, trade associations representing new media developers are beginning to emerge as the industry itself grows and this creates challenges for the unions.

Most performer unions report that developers are seeking reduced fees for the original work and to acquire all rights in perpetuity for all potential markets. The SAG Interactive Agreement provides a "buyout" for all current uses. ACTRA has negotiated arrangements for a few projects which provide for 30 years of use rights in CD-ROM and DVD formats. While such positions may make sense for developers who have relatively small budgets and uncertain distribution networks, the unions have often fought hard to defeat such concepts elsewhere.

(b) All unions representing performers in the recorded media are trying to cover them in the new media. Existing members of these unions have the expertise required by new media developers, and the collective bargaining agreements cover the circumstances involved in filming new media work. Developers have sought the services of professional performers when they have undertaken their production, and most unions have successfully asserted their jurisdiction. However, challenges to union jurisdiction and the applicability of the agreements to such work should grow as the industry matures. Preserving the unions' jurisdiction in this field varies for almost every country; outcomes will be determined according to local laws, relative strengths of the unions and the employers, and other factors. But the fact remains that, if laws provide that a person cannot film another without their consent, or provide a statutory process for obtaining certification rights in a country with a strong tradition of union organization, the union's task is made easier.

(c) The lack of success of new media developers to create applications for mass markets can be traced in part to inadequacies in the technology, but also to the failure to embrace the concept that interactivity may require new storytelling techniques. The traditional linear story with a beginning, middle and end may need to be replaced by a more dynamic process which permits consumers to fashion their own individual story from options presented. Already, scripts for interactive production may be much longer than for an equivalent traditional production. Scriptwriters must learn new skills and perhaps new ways of thinking. Directors and other members of the creative production team may also need different methods.

Several companies are now involved in producing material directly for the Internet. One Canadian company is developing what it calls a "sit.com", a 13-episode series in which viewers will be able to participate by clicking on various option buttons. You can find out what the character is thinking, for example, and compare the thoughts with the dialogue. Plans are under way in many countries to produce television programmes specifically for webcasting.

Certain categories of performer will be affected by these changes, including puppeteers, stunt performers and other performers. New digital production techniques may require more sensitivity in physical movements, for things such as motion capture. However, the job of the actor has always been to convince the audience that they are someone who they are not, or that the fictional situation is real. Actors have been required to deliver their performance in a variety of different combinations, working with another person or alone, pretending to be in a dangerous situation when they are in a studio. The actors in Jurassic Park looked out in awe over an empty field onto which dinosaurs were added much later by computer, while those in Titanic were never really on a ship that was sinking, but they made the audience believe they were. This is not much different from producing a scene in studio against a blue background, as is done for many interactive projects. These skills will continue to be required, regardless of the manner in which the production is put together, or the involvement of the computer.

(d) In the longer term, the work of the actor may also be changed by the new technologies. We have already seen the move to digital special effects and digital stunts. Animation techniques improve and make such productions more and more realistic. There have been productions involving performers physically separated by time and geography and examples of significant alteration of performances. For instance: John Goodman, who is right-handed, was digitally re-engineered as left-handed in Babe, and a second deck was digitally added to a small stadium and 1,000 extras became 20,000 spectators; Paula Abdul danced with Gene Kelly in a commercial, even though the two never met; Natalie Cole sang with her late father Nat King Cole in performances originally recorded decades apart; The Crow, with martial arts star Brandon Lee was completed after his untimely death, with footage featuring him being superimposed on scenes recorded after he died; the blockbuster film Titanic used hundreds of digital extras to create the necessary atmosphere.

The voice synthesizer is emerging as a possible replacement for the voice artist; the motion capture technique may begin to replace dancers. The next generation, which may soon be here, is the creation of entirely computer-generated performances and stars, so-called synthespians or vactors (virtual actors).

A new Hollywood company plans to digitally recreate famous screen performers. In August 1999, the late Marlene Dietrich made her digital debut in a brief commercial for the studio, which has a roster of stars it intends to bring back to life using an electronic process that tracks facial expressions and a three-dimensional animation technique that is already in use. The company will film similarly built actors and then digitally manipulate the look of the famous personality using as many as 5,000 measurements for each film frame, and expect to be able to provide cameo performances within the next three years and full-length film performances the following year, proceeding on the basis of signed agreements with the surviving family. However, fundamental legal and ethical questions are raised by this. If performers with well-established track records can be brought back to life to appear in entirely new works, will this increase difficulties for the next generation of performers? What is the legal situation for the company and its roster? Recent legal cases in the United States suggest that copyright holders of digitally created derivative work, based on digitized versions of recorded performances in which a performer consented to appear, have stronger rights than those of the performer in the original work.

Martial artists and dancers who agreed to perform scripted movements for videotape were used in developing very successful Mortal Kombat video games. The developers used digital versions of the movements and images, altered them by changing facial features, and combined them in new ways. The courts found the digital alteration of the movements and images created a derivative work, protected by copyright, that pre-empted the performers' right of publicity claims. Performers will probably have to rely for protection on SAG's provision governing reuse of photography or soundtracks, arguing that digital manipulations of their images and performances cannot be used without separate bargaining or damages. However, it has been ruled that studios can create new digital products from existing copyrighted film without violating the Reuse Provision of the SAG Agreement because, in the particular case in question, the performer's physical characteristics were only the basis for creating new material.⁽²⁴⁾

The situation for performers in countries with a full range of copyright protection may be little better. Many of the same principles could apply and the same question posed -- is this a reuse of an existing copyright protected work, or an original work? In any case, performances are only protected for 50 to 75 years, after which the work moves to the public domain and becomes fully available to those who wish to use it in new ways, or to manipulate it in a manner not intended by the original performer.

Live performance is an indispensable and basic component of the arts, which has traditionally enjoyed substantial public funding and subsidies in most countries. Indeed, many countries used to have state-financed theatre, opera, ballet and other live performance companies, but many of these have been slimmed down, privatized or closed. In general, in the past 20 years less and less money has been available for the arts, and live performance has been a major victim of the decline in public arts funding.⁽²⁵⁾ However, action to promote the performing arts is planned through social dialogue at the level of the European Union (see Chapter 9). According to a study on Africa, Asia and Latin America by the International Federation of Musicians, new laws have been adopted to promote culture in Brazil, and increased public funds have been provided for musical training, live performance and local music in the Philippines; but in many other countries little has been done to promote live performance.⁽²⁶⁾

The possibilities the Internet provides for promoting live performances, including selling tickets or reserving seats on-line, indicate that many theatres and concert venues cannot afford not to embrace the technologies. Wider dissemination of theatrical, musical, dance and other recordings via television and the Internet can encourage greater public interest in attending "the real thing".

A project in various European countries has studied how actors, musicians and other performers may work in hospitals, prisons, arts in the community, workplaces or schools instead of being unemployed in gaps between contracts, to entertain patients, students and others, at the same time as acquiring new skills and increasing their employability. Performers rarely have the possibility to be employed on a regular basis, but they have skills that could permit them to earn more and acquire other skills, such as delivering training for the health and education sectors on drugs issues, or providing life skills for young offenders.⁽²⁷⁾

Digital production and electronic workflows are now commonplace in media newsrooms. While newspapers have content management systems, TV and radio have electronic news production systems. Feeding digital elements into these systems are the content providers -- journalists, camera operators, photographers, illustrators -- who in turn are increasingly fed by on-line services: newswires, library databases, image banks and the Internet.

The biggest and furthest reaching single information communication technology development for the media has been the growth of the Internet, which has revolutionized the processes of news and information gathering, publishing, distribution, products and services and ways of working. In recent years the Internet has emerged as a significant medium in its own right. Newspaper, magazine and book publishers have learnt many lessons about it from their own experience and from studying competitor activity locally and around the globe. The Internet needs to be treated as an entirely new medium, and newspapers will not achieve all that they otherwise could, if they simply think of the Internet as a newspaper on-line.⁽²⁸⁾

Publishers are actively exploiting opportunities provided by the Internet by offering various new products and services, which are no longer simply on-line versions of printed products. For example, some newspapers are publishing classified advertising only on the Web, while others are concentrating on information technology publications for specialist audiences.⁽²⁹⁾ The newspaper business had long been virtually the sole recipient of classified advertising revenue worth billions of dollars in the United States alone, and that revenue is rapidly shifting to the Internet, so that media companies have had to move quickly to keep pace.⁽³⁰⁾

Print-based businesses are likely to shrink despite the boost that new media can give to the sale of printed products. For some, such as local newspapers heavily dependent on classified advertising, or printers producing reference material that is now tending to be presented in much more user-friendly and searchable electronic formats, the future looks bleak.⁽³¹⁾

For journalists in general, particularly freelancers and employees of smaller publications, technology has changed the way of working. Most changes are for the better, although technology sometimes has unfortunate side effects; it can increase pressure on the reporter by raising expectations and lead to "information overload". First the personal computer, then the modem, and now the Internet, have speeded up the process of writing and filing stories. When the personal computer replaced the typewriter, it eliminated some of the time-consuming steps of editing on paper and retyping. Many creative writers and some journalists lament this, believing that the process of typing two or more drafts helped them polish their copy. Others argue that word processing makes changes and corrections much easier, so writers are encouraged to do more polishing rather than less. The time saved is almost certainly an overwhelming benefit, even if some reporters believe the sober second thoughts when retyping a messy draft sometimes produced better results than hurried editing of on-screen text.

For freelancers, word processing means greater productivity. Time once spent retyping a clean copy can now be devoted to the next article. This can translate into more income, if work is available, but money is needed to pay for the computer and for other equipment that is becoming increasingly necessary. The cost of such equipment is an issue for publishers and journalism schools,⁽³²⁾ and is critical for developing countries.

Though new technology has introduced some extra costs, it has brought benefits in return. Portable computers mean that reporters working away from the main office can now deliver stories quickly, simply and reliably using a modem, rather than dictating them to a typist on a rewrite desk. The ability to submit stories -- and communicate with editors electronically -- saves time for most journalists, particularly freelancers, who often delivered their finished work by hand in the past. Now they can easily work for publications far from home, without worrying about the time and cost of delivering completed work. However, the impact of computers and modems is old news to most reporters and editors today. Excitement now is about the potential of the Internet. If word processing and e-mail helped speed and simplified writing and editing, the Internet's promise is largely that it will help journalists gather information earlier; when used well, it has done much to eliminate a kind of caste system in journalism, in which the editorial employees of medium-sized to large daily newspapers enjoyed substantial advantages denied to their colleagues working on smaller "dailies" and specialized periodicals as well as to freelancers. Press release news-wires are a prime example, working much like true news-wires, except that instead of news stories written by journalists, they distribute press releases prepared by businesses, government organizations and other bodies such as unions. Though generally self-serving and one-sided, they are a major source of news leads. Until recently, only large newspapers had access to PR wires, because they were delivered in the same way as true news-wires -- through dedicated machines or data feeds. The wire operators would install feeds at no charge for big newspapers, but neither smaller publications nor freelancers could obtain them at any price, because the wire operators did not consider it cost-effective to provide the service to them. Then came the Internet. Press releases are posted on websites accessible to anyone or, in some cases like the American-based PR Newswire or British-based NEWSdesk, require journalists to register and state their affiliation with a legitimate media outlet -- which, nonetheless, does not have to be a major daily newspaper. Suddenly magazines, trade publications, fledgling on-line news services and freelancers have access to material they previously could not obtain or had to request through other channels, often by surface mail because no one would pay for faster methods. At the same time, websites set up by corporations, government departments and agencies, public interest groups and even courts provide useful information that journalists can get quickly from their desks.

The potential disadvantage is that this wealth of readily accessible but often biased and self-serving information becomes a substitute for independent reporting. Reporters and editors have to be vigilant, but press releases are a part of life, and the ability to obtain them quickly and conveniently when needed should leave more time for real reporting.⁽³³⁾

Other technologies contribute to wider access as well. For instance, it has become increasingly common for corporations to hold telephone conference calls with reporters to discuss financial results, product announcements, mergers and acquisitions, and the like. Some companies, primarily in the high-technology industries, use webcasting for this purpose, providing video to accompany the audio. Reporters who would previously have had to choose between travelling to a remote location to cover a story and relying on phone calls -- probably to a person at a lower level in the organization -- can now listen to and ask questions of senior management without leaving their offices. Audio and video conferences can substitute for face-to-face meetings, in journalism and other areas; these alternatives can ease the time pressures most journalists face, and open to freelancers and those working for smaller publications opportunities that were previously reserved for those whose employers would cover travel expenses. For many publications in the past, if time and money were invested to send a reporter any distance, a story had to come out of the trip to justify it. Covering more events in less time at lower cost may help make the right news judgements -- it is better to waste time on a conference call that was not newsworthy than to write off a two-day trip with travel and hotel bills.

At News International (United Kingdom), all journalists across their four newspaper titles have had desktop access to the Internet since 1998. Services include not only Web and e-mail but a corporate intranet, with libraries for each group title and other newspaper archives for which they have bilateral arrangements, and commercial databases like FT Profile. Similarly, all Guardian Newspapers and Associated Newspapers staffers have access. At The Daily Telegraph, which still used the Atex system, there were eight or nine Internet terminals around the newsroom in mid-1999, each providing access for about seven journalists; but there were plans to give all journalists desktop services within one to two years.

At the BBC, the United Kingdom's biggest employer of journalists with over 2,000 staffers, virtually all journalists have desktop access to on-line services, which include their own internal library database, wire feeds, the Web and e-mail. In 1997, the BBC also introduced the Electronic News Production System, which other broadcasters are reportedly adopting; this system allows journalists to do everything on-screen, including audio and video editing.

While it is impossible to obtain information from every employer of journalists in Europe, it is probably safe to say that newsrooms across most of western Europe are now getting fully on-line, having gone from a distinct lack of access for most journalists, to mixed access, to almost complete access -- at least in major firms -- since 1997. However, this is far from true in developing country newspapers. As would be expected, Internet usage in industrialized country media is also now nearly universal. Although particular specialists, such as showbusiness reporters, have been using the Internet for some time, this is now true for almost all journalists. The following comments made by journalists illustrate the point: "Use of the Internet in particular is so important to journalists to get information today. We're starting to see that with Web links listed in stories in The Times and the reporters also putting their e-mail address at the bottom now. The Web provides mainly background information, but sometimes leads. E-mail is used a lot for communicating and reaching contacts, but less for actually interviewing."⁽³⁴⁾ (Judith Dunn, director of editorial services, News International.) "Most print journalists, certainly all staffers here, use the Net for research, whether it's simply to check the publisher of a book, look up a telephone number or dig up research for a story. I'd say about half to three-quarters of our writers now file by e-mail, which makes life a lot easier and allows us to push deadlines out a little. We also use the Net quite extensively to locate photographs."⁽³⁵⁾ (Ian Katz, features editor, The Guardian, London.)"The Internet allows journalists to research using the Web. Associated is using browser-based technologies to help journalists, giving subs and editors access to electronic photo libraries and story libraries."⁽³⁶⁾ (Martin Dunn, editor-in-chief, Associated New Media.) "I still use traditional sources but the day now begins on-line, checking stories on the Net directory news sites like Slashdot, Technet, Wired and Newsnow. My e-mail box is always full of press releases, as well as tips and responses from readers."⁽³⁷⁾ (Chris Nuttal, BBC journalist.)

A recent report⁽³⁸⁾ by the Global Financial Communication Network (GFC Net) confirmed that ICT usage by business and financial journalists is rapidly increasing. Conducted in Europe, Hong Kong (China), Japan and the United States, the report found that all journalists use the Internet -- at least once a day for research by 80 per cent of them -- and that 80 per cent have their work published on the Internet as well as in off-line publications. A director of one of GFC's members commented: "The research demonstrates that the Internet is already having a significant effect on the way journalists work, and this trend looks set to accelerate. As competition increases among media titles, those journalists who have not already got to grips with it will be under increasing pressure to do so in order to stay ahead of their rivals in sourcing news."

Another impact of ICTs on journalists is that for 20 years technology has been one of the most popular subjects for publishing. Magazines devoted to computers and telecommunications have proliferated. Daily newspapers and business and consumer magazines have reinforced their coverage of technology. Journalists who acquired some knowledge of the subject have been able to work a rich vein of job opportunities and freelance work. The only concern is whether this boom, already past its peak, will fade away entirely as computing becomes so mainstream that it is no longer interesting. Some believe the technology beat will soon disappear.⁽³⁹⁾

Freelance journalists can avoid some of the uncertainty that comes with working in an industry in transition by being in both worlds, doing a mixture of work for traditional and new media. Provided that a person is open to change to take advantage of that possibility, the rise of on-line media means new opportunities; but some old markets will inevitably fade away, and freelancers, like most workers in today's economy, must learn to be adaptable.

The monopoly that traditional media institutions (newspapers, broadcasters, wire services and others) had over the dissemination of information has been rapidly eroded by digital networks, not only because nearly anyone with access to a computer can become a newshound or publisher, but also because media institutions are having to enter into dialogue with their audiences. This loss of exclusivity over the news and weakening of the media's role as news arbitrators began in the 1990s, and the new millennium will bring further changes to the professional and social functions of the journalist. "Many in the industry have not yet grasped the magnitude of the changes the digital age has wrought ... Journalists need new tools, we need to understand how to use them to become more productive and to make what we produce more accessible. If journalists do not take control of the new digital tools, others without journalistic values will."⁽⁴⁰⁾

Undoubtedly the biggest recent change in journalistic practice has come from the Internet, with the use of the Web for research and of e-mail for communication, since around 1995. A study carried out between April 1997 and March 1998 examined the impact of the Internet on the way newspaper journalists obtained information,⁽⁴¹⁾ and identified seven types of contemporary newspaper journalist, vis-à-vis their attitudes to the Internet.

(i) Net worshippers are computer-literate, (mostly) young, have grown up with ICTs and are culturally committed to them. Usually working in new media or freelance, they see the Internet as a medium to extend democracy. New media journalists are not generally in the mainstream of news and are typically in their twenties, far younger than their traditional paper colleagues. They usually publish and research their work in the on-line domain: "Overload, authority, cost and displacement are swept aside as being either not a problem or inconsequential (given the universal benefits it brings)."

(ii) The economically driven tend to work in small newspapers or magazines with no library, or are freelance, using the Internet for the wealth of free information it provides, relatively effortlessly. Desktop access is the norm at their workplace, and they are adept at finding mainstream (e.g. financial) information that would otherwise be expensive to obtain. Most are at the top of the profession: senior managers and editors see the Internet as a way of saving money. Like the first group, they are very enthusiastic about using the Web to publish, and wary of being left behind.

(iii) The pragmatists are more traditional journalists who have incorporated the Internet into their range of sources. They do not see it as a fundamental shift in society or as a way to reduce company bills, but appreciate its convenience and power and use it effectively. Most national and regional journalists with easy access are included in this category; they look at each story and make a professional decision as to whether it should be researched on-line, off-line or using a combination of both.

(iv) Occasional dippers use the Internet only when other sources do not deliver the required information, more because of lack of access to or knowledge of the Web than any dislike.

(v) Enthusiastic novices do not know exactly what the Internet offers; most are either older (over 50) or younger, trainee journalists, though none claim their age is a barrier or disincentive to learning. However, younger ones cite job pressures as one main reason why they have not found out more.

(vi) The non-believers are basically not interested in the Internet because of the problem of authenticating whatever data are found; this group is used to working the old way and finds it more reliable.

(vii) The resentful dinosaurs regard the Internet as a threat to their privileged access to information and are not interested in empowerment or democratizing the news. They jealously guard their sources and positions, and are irritated by the ease with which the Web makes anyone a potential publisher. They are particularly worried about electronic delivery of newspapers and the effect on their jobs, with rolling deadlines, interactivity and links to sources so the public can check the accuracy of reporting.

The report noted that most enthusiasm for the Internet came from senior managers and journalists over 40 years old, because they saw the Internet as a way of reducing costs; older journalists were more likely to have desktop access and be able to afford a PC for the home -- and to have the kudos to enable greater flexibility and the freedom to experiment; younger journalists had insecure jobs, thus too much pressure to be teaching themselves about the Internet. However, usage was "low and patchy, except by freelances and some specialist publications journalists". There was little access for the majority, minimal training either at schools of journalism or in-house, and an overall attitude of disinterest: the Internet was seen as "marginal". Searching the Web to obtain research from companies, government departments and official institutions was the principal use, followed by reading overseas newspapers and press releases. E-mail usage was even less prevalent, except among the first two types of Internet users, and mainly confined to obtaining further information from or arranging meetings with contacts, especially overseas. Newsgroups were hardly used at all. The report observed that the perceived impact of the ICTs on working practices ranged from "not at all" to "completely". For type (i) users, the effect of the Internet was considered total; it completely changed their working roles and in some instances careers. For most others, the effects were minimal, with little evidence of journalists working from home more or making contacts less. However, some journalists were attempting stories that would otherwise have been beyond them, owing to the additional research resources; and stories may generally have had more breadth.

In his survey, Wallace noted that newsroom usage was fairly evenly split between accessing the Web, interrogating on-line databases and communicating by e-mail, both internally and externally. The main use of Internet services was gathering background information and obtaining government news releases. Print and new media journalists were also likely to download graphics, while the latter "also exploit the facility of the Internet to find experts and conduct on-line interviews with them". However, access to on-line services was still very mixed, ranging from everyone having desktop access to just one person in the entire newsroom. Interestingly, the least access appeared to be among print journalists, who used the services the least, usually less than once a day, and fewer than one in ten of their stories were assisted by on-line research. Writers were not generally heavy users, consulting the Web between one and five times per day on average. As a group, they still seemed to prefer traditional methods to obtain information. The study concluded that:

The survey also found that writers overwhelmingly thought the technology would be used more, with e-mail, filing stories electronically and press release retrieval expected to increase. It indicated -- as did the survey conducted by Nicholas and Williams in 1998 -- that the ICTs are increasingly central to the journalistic process, at least in journalists' minds -- if not in day-to-day practice. Although, according to the survey, attitudes towards the technologies were becoming more open, access to on-line services, especially among print writers, seemed to lag behind. By 1999, that no longer appeared true. More and more publishers, particularly in national newspapers, have made the Internet a universal and indispensable tool.

"The Net levels the playing field for freelances -- in the past the access which staffers had to powerful databases like FT Profile gave them a huge advantage over freelances, but now anyone can tap a whole battery of on-line archives that give them access to as much information as the formal services."⁽⁴³⁾

Freelance journalists, generally speaking, have been the ones using and exploiting the ICTs for both the longest time and the greatest gain. In their survey, Nicholas and Williams found that e-mail enabled freelancers to build and maintain a high profile for themselves, through keeping in constant touch with publishers. News and press releases, background data and other Internet sources have strengthened their position in relation to staffers -- they now have as much access to story libraries as national newspaper offices; and experts on any subject are available for interview or comment anywhere in the world.

The advantages lie not only in the ability to write stronger articles and submit them electronically, but also in greater flexibility, effectively longer deadlines and the increased chance to undertake a commission from virtually anywhere.

While the Internet seems to have made life considerably easier for freelances, the opposite appears true for staff journalists. Information overload is one of the main complaints made by full-time journalists regularly using the Internet, with e-mail the main culprit. Press releases, electronic newsletters, internal memos and readers' responses all ensure a steady stream of data into in-boxes. While this has made it easier and faster to obtain information, it is a double-edged sword, and is often clearly "too much of a good thing".

This paradox is at the heart of the first main negative aspect emerging from the proliferation of digital technologies: an increased workload. Because the ICTs allow journalists to work quicker, there are greater expectations on staffers to produce more. Digital workflows now allow content to be "repurposed" for other media, and this has exacerbated the problem. Ironically enough, the second main issue, diminishing authors' rights, really only affects freelances; at least this is the case in the United Kingdom, since the 1988 Copyright Act effectively gave authors' rights to their employers (see Chapter 4).

"We're now getting much greater involvement from the people in the story itself. The journalist's business is becoming much more closely connected to its subjects, and this makes for better reporting and a better relationship between the news organization and its readers. Right now there are four people just sorting through readers' e-mails, so every day we have this immense interaction with our readers. This is fundamentally changing journalism."⁽⁴⁵⁾ New media technologies have clearly influenced the working lives of journalists, both positively and negatively. Media organizations are providing their editorial staff with ever more technical support, but also reducing the levels of human support while demanding greater productivity. The Internet has given journalists easier, wider access to information resources, but also swamps them with data. It is easier now for freelances to source commissions and submit articles across the globe, but harder now for them to control the copyright of that work.

Quantitative and qualitative research is required to understand better how all this is affecting the working lives of journalists. The technologies require journalists to learn new skills -- such as how to conduct relevant searches on the Web and how to interview by e-mail -- and they have affected how journalists do their jobs, further blurring the boundary between work and leisure (journalists can now work at all hours, especially if they have home Internet access). However, most believe that their traditional journalistic skills are still important: checking facts and, when possible, talking to sources; chasing up leads; not accepting rumour at face value or the first opinion; getting to the heart of the story and unpicking various angles. Skills like these have been the stock-in-trade of journalists since the profession began, and -- for all the technology in the world -- many believe that they cannot be replaced.

There will still be a need for journalists. The way they do their work and the tools they use to do it may change dramatically thanks to new communications channels -- but someone will have to collect and organize information, be able to write well, and to provide the fact-checking and editing required to make that information useful. If the interactive nature of the Internet can make the media more responsive to their readers, that is a good thing for all concerned, not least the journalists, for whom public mistrust hinders them doing their jobs, causes personal stress, and undermines job satisfaction. It is not clear that on-line news media will earn the public's trust -- some early signs are not encouraging. When newspapers first started on-line they were concerned about e-mail becoming a big problem, in terms of overload, but e-mail feedback has become a more inclusive process and an integral part of on-line editorials throughout the industry. For example, a few hours after the earthquake in Turkey in August 1999, when the BBC was just starting to get a hint of its scale, News Online put up an invitation on the website for anyone near the zone to send an account. Within ten minutes it had four verifiable stories from Turkey, with live eyewitness accounts of what was happening.

Global publishing is now available to all, and, while people favour brands which are trusted, this will not necessarily be the case for much longer. On an average day, 44,000 different stories are viewed on the BBC News site alone; but they are certainly not written only by journalists. Ultimately, the new media channels have in many ways turned primary sources and ordinary people into de facto journalists themselves, perhaps harming the previous monopoly that a select group of professionals used to have in producing public information. Disintermediation allows Internet users to go straight to the source of what they want. Has this diminished or improved the quality and availability of information and opinion? If the mass media was previously involved in one-way communication, disseminating the world view of the vested interests that controlled it, that is no longer so, and communication can now be more truly interactive.

Governments have a key role in efforts to promote press freedom, protect individual privacy and control the publication of certain kinds of content on the media (e.g. pornography, propaganda, fraudulent and other criminal activities and anti-government material). However, governments sometimes also curtail such freedoms, not always for reasons of national security. They have a responsibility to protect people's lives and maintain law and order; this should mean that journalists and media enterprises are protected against violence and allowed to perform their work without undue restriction, while the media industries have to act responsibly and within acceptable standards.

The printing industry is very diverse in technologies and in size of enterprises. In terms of production volume, there are a limited number of large-scale operations, but many small ones. From the economic perspective, the printing industry is one of the largest industries and generates annual revenues of at least US$500 billion worldwide.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The restructuring of publishing and the graphical industry and their incorporation in an integrated information industry have been driven to a large extent by major technological developments and convergence, based on microelectronics, computers and telecommunications. The digitalization of data means that they can be manipulated and integrated on the basis of their common structure, and optical fibre and satellite technology offers rapid transmission of increasing amounts of information per second. The development of integrated circuits and microchips has been crucial for data communication and integration of electronic communication, accompanied by a convergence and integration of economic activities. One striking example⁽⁴⁷⁾ is the ending of the separation and even the distinction between audiovisual media and printed media, entertainment and information, as a consequence of the advent of multimedia and the Internet. A similar analysis of the emergence of an integrated information industry as a result of ICTs was made by American and European printing industries research institutes.⁽⁴⁸⁾

This converging set of information and communication technologies explains why convergence in the media industries is now qualitatively different from the conglomeration of entertainment and media activities in the 1980s, such as Time-Warner, created from the merger of Time and Warner Bros. in 1989, which produced magazines, books, music and film products -- which were then mainly separate activities. Now, however, digital technology facilitates the generation, storage, retrieval, processing and transmission of any sort of information: text, data, sound and pictures. Therefore, there will be growth in multiple media companies -- those that engage in activities which used to belong to different sectors of the media industry -- and a new range of multimedia companies, specializing in off-line products (such as CD-ROMs and DVDs) and on-line information services (e.g. websites, electronic commerce), that fully integrate text, data, sound, still images and video and allow for interactive use.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Thus, a fundamental effect is the dissolving of technological boundaries between the different sectors of the media industry. Not all firms that specialize in printing will disappear, but an increasing number of firms will carry out various media activities and some which traditionally did not perform publishing and graphical work will now do so on the basis of digital technology and media-independent storage of information in databases. Orders for printing work are no longer automatically given to printers; for instance, Dutch research on print buyers found that only about 80 per cent of them gave orders for printing work to printers in 1998, compared to just under 90 per cent in 1996.⁽⁵⁰⁾ On the other hand, printers now also offer non-traditional services such as building and maintaining databases, production of Internet sites and communication consultancy.

However, the convergence process and the emergence of multimedia companies do not simply mean more giant firms operating globally. In fact, the structure of the graphical industry -- which has always been known for its above-average share of small and medium-sized companies, will probably not be greatly changed by the ICTs. In publishing and printing, the combination of a small group of huge enterprises and a large number of small firms is likely to continue. This pattern also emerges from the following forecasts by research institutes concerning the American and European printing industries, on some segments of the information and entertainment industry:

For each segment it is easy to identify examples of big global firms. An example in the digital information processing sector is SPI, a Filipino database conversion company, which currently employs about 2,000 workers in Manila. It has a network of marketing/sales offices and agents in the United States, in Europe (France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), Australia and Hong Kong, China, serving international publishers such as Bertelsmann, Elsevier Science and Wolters Kluwer. It aims at generating half the global sales in this segment by the year 2000 and, as part of this strategy, it has acquired the former Reed Elsevier pre-press facility, Northprint, which now has on-line connections with the Manila site and its main clients, so that files of text and images can be transferred to any production facility depending on considerations of technological expertise and labour costs. For the industry segment covering information and entertainment library collections, the Microsoft and Leo Kirch libraries, which contain all movies produced by Columbia Tristar, MCA, Paramount, Walt Disney and Warner Bros., are examples of global media companies.

Printing on a global scale was not unknown in the 1980s. Some international newspaper publishers used overseas printing plants, like the International Herald Tribune, with ten printing plants outside the United States.⁽⁵³⁾ However, global printing is now qualitatively different, based on the cooperation between telecommunications companies and manufacturers of digital colour printing machines such as Scitex, Xerox, Indigo and Agfa, some of which have digital printing equipment around the globe that can be fed by clients through the telecom network, with printing-on-demand orders.⁽⁵⁴⁾

These examples illustrate that such firms' sales and production operations are global, because information is their raw material and digitized information can be transported anywhere in the world without loss of time through the global information and communication network; they are based on the globalization of information transfer, for which the universality of digital language and communication networks have created the technological conditions. For those involved in electronic media operations on a global scale it is, therefore, not necessary to be a large media corporation.

Although ICTs facilitate a global information network, publishing and the graphical industry in general are not clearly globalizing markets, as data for the European union (EU) Member States demonstrate.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Between 1985 and 1996 the total turnover of enterprises in publishing, printing and the reproduction of recorded media rose from 57,004 million ecu to 129,980 million ecu. The trade data indicate a modest trend towards internationalization of trade in publishing, printing and the reproduction of recorded media. The value of exports (between EU Member States, and from the EU to other regions) as a percentage of total turnover of the EU Member States rose slightly, from 10.5 per cent in 1988 to 10.7 per cent in 1995, while the value of imports as a percentage of apparent consumption declined a little from 8.5 per cent to 8.3 per cent. The share of exports between EU Member States fell from 63.4 per cent in 1988 to 62 per cent in 1995, while those outside the EU rose from 34.1 per cent to 38 per cent. Imports from other EU Member States dropped from 78.3 per cent of total imports in 1988 to 74.2 per cent in 1995, while those from outside the EU grew from 21.6 per cent to 25.8 per cent. This does not indicate strongly increasing internationalization of trade in printing and publishing. Indeed, the main export markets for EU Member States have traditionally been other European countries, some of which (Austria, Finland and Sweden) joined the EU in 1995.

The pattern of trade is strongest within the EU and with other European countries, followed by trade with the United States, Japan and east and south Asia (unfortunately, more specific data about the "rest of the world" are not available). However, when this aggregate analysis is supplemented by an analysis of segments of publishing (scientific information, professional, business, general public information), a differentiated pattern of internationalization emerges:⁽⁵⁶⁾ some segments, like scientific information and electronic information services, are tending towards a globalized economy in the sense of global distribution of sales and an oligopolistic type of market controlled by a few multinationals; professional and business information, and general interest magazines, show limited internationalization in the sense of a regional bloc or national production structure serving a market controlled by national or multinational media companies; and other segments have purely national control and production -- e.g. non-English-language educational publishers. The book publishing industry in the United States had sales of $23 billion in 1998, a 6 per cent increase over 1997 and double the figure for 1987.⁽⁵⁷⁾

A whole variety of technological developments have transformed the way publishers and printers operate to produce printed products. Original texts from writers are now usually in disc or e-mail form, rather than typewritten, dictated or handwritten. On-screen editing -- using spellchecking, proofreading, formatting and calculation software tools -- has grown in importance, and can be done at the same time as graphic designers and production staff prepare the text for printing using the same electronic version of the text. Fact-checking, referencing and research can be performed using the Internet, and electronic correspondence and transmission of fully formatted material to printers is becoming the norm. Versions of the same text can be turned into electronic products or posted on the Internet.

Mechanical typesetting has been increasingly overtaken by digital typesetting, developments in optical character recognition and scanning technology, and the increased use of Post Script files or zipped discs from authors/publishers that minimize work for typesetters. Digital printing is displacing lithography for short-run printing, and can offer personalized products.⁽⁵⁸⁾ It is also accounting for a steadily increasing share of printing in general in industrialized countries. Computer-to-plate technologies have cut out several parts of the production process (for example, it is no longer necessary to make photographic reproductions of typesetting and illustrations, from which lithographic plates were made, and page layout can be performed on the computer screen rather than using "cut and paste" techniques). Colour reproduction has been transformed by digital technologies, which for example allow photographs to be downloaded from a photo library on the Internet and "dropped in" to a page layout, without the printer ever having the original photographic transparency.

Changes in the technologies used in copy preparation, typesetting, printing and binding, as outlined above, have transformed the graphical industries in many countries. Publishers have often found that journals "must, to exploit the [electronic] medium to the full, eventually diverge from their paper counterparts and [they] require a new and radical conception of ... an interactive, hypertext-linked, multimedia product".⁽⁵⁹⁾ There are evident advantages of on-line products being interactive, such as the possibility of peer review of academic articles, instant global responses to information posted on the Internet, and direct access via hyperlinks to the sources of articles and other relevant information. Co-authoring packages exist, allowing writers from around the world to collaborate on drafting for publication.

A new problem has arisen concerning publishing-on-demand by the new technologies. Until now, the author of a book could sell his or her copyright to a publisher for a fixed time, during which the publisher would guarantee the availability of the book to the public. After that period the copyright would revert to the author, who could dispose of this right again. The new technologies, especially the Internet, are changing this pattern fundamentally. Nowadays publishers can offer "books on demand"⁽⁶⁰⁾ via the Internet or other means, and therefore make them available for ever. Books-on-demand services mean that a publisher can offer a book via the Internet or other means regardless of whether it is in stock or not. The moment a client wants to buy the book, the publisher produces it individually and delivers it to the client. By this new method the copyright never reverts to the author, because the publisher can make the book available at any time.

3. Information technology: Creator
or destroyer of jobs for men and
women in the media and
entertainment industries?

No one can give a definite answer to this question. When examining statistics on past employment changes, it is impossible to separate out technological from other factors, and the data can give only an overall picture of a very heterogeneous range of enterprises and individuals; any forecasts are based on assumptions and detailed data sets on specific occupations are not readily available. However, for some groups of workers, particularly those providing creative content in these industries, the development of distribution channels has given rise to a tremendous growth in opportunities for work in many countries. At least part of that growth, which has been maintained until the writing of this report and is likely to continue, can be attributed to ICT-related work in fields like computer-generated digital production, visual special effects technologies, and systems and network management; nonetheless, some occupations (such as camera operators, sound engineers, typesetters and paste-up artists) have suffered major reductions in employment because of new technologies.

Among trade unionists in these industries, there is a perception that employers are unwilling to accept that musicians, actors, journalists and other freelance, contract or temporary workers are their employees. This is reinforced by the fact that employers among the majors in film, broadcasting and the media are rarely in contact with workers' organizations, and some leading media and entertainment conglomerates are anti-union or "union-free" enterprises. Thus, when workers from unionized workforces lose their jobs as part of their employers' adjustment to changes in technology, competition, corporate structure or demand, they may find it impossible to find a new job in anything other than a non-unionized enterprise.

It is very difficult to assess the quality and durability of any new jobs created, but innovative uses of the new technologies in media and entertainment have clearly created jobs which are often unstable, and not always open to people already working in the sector. Workers with few or traditional skills are the most likely victims of technology, but there are perhaps other vulnerable groups -- older workers in general, middle management and administration for example. Positive employment effects in certain countries may be accompanied by negative impacts in other competitor countries.

For a variety of reasons, the demand for information technology (IT) workers has increased more rapidly than that for workers with other types of skills. In addition to the explosive growth of the Internet, most media firms in industrialized countries have also experienced rapid expansion in the use of advanced IT techniques such as Intranets in order to raise productivity or improve the flow of information.⁽¹⁾

What kinds of jobs will be created and where? It is probable that many new opportunities will arise for geographically mobile, well-educated, multiskilled and adaptable people, but more and more jobs are likely to be unstable, temporary assignments without fringe benefits or social security coverage, and some job losses or downgradings are inevitable.

The recent growth of television channels and programming as well as the development of the World Wide Web have created new employment opportunities and outlets for actors, musicians, designers, journalists and others. New occupations such as webmasters, web editors and information technology specialists have mushroomed. Increasing use has been made of teleworking, remote production and other advantages offered by the communication technologies, and possibilities to speed up work processes have come to the fore.

This work process is increasingly common in certain media and entertainment professions and may involve: working full time (or part time) at home for an employer while being entitled to the same benefits provided to on-site workers; working full time for the employer but only teleworking for a specified number of days per week or month; or being an independent contractor and not receiving benefits or equipment from the employer.⁽²⁾ The employers' responsibilities with regard to working conditions, social security, and so on for telework employees vary according to the contract or understanding that exists between such teleworkers and employers, and the relevant labour laws. Statistics on telework are based on various assumptions and definitions; the following figures should therefore be treated with caution. While telework is most widespread in the United States, where, in 1997, it was estimated to cover over 8 million workers and account for 6.5 per cent of the workforce, other countries also had significant numbers that same year-- over 500,000 in the United Kingdom, 150,000 in Germany and 100,000 in Spain. It was also common in countries such as Sweden and Canada and involved over 32,000 workers in Ireland, about 4 per cent of the workforce.⁽³⁾ Telework is particularly common in journalism, editing and indexing, but also exists in other parts of the media and entertainment industries. In the United Kingdom in 1999, about 59,000 employee and self-employed teleworkers were in the media and entertainment industries and, among these, the "authors, writers and journalists" category made up around 33,000, while "artists, graphic designers, etc." accounted for 22,000.⁽⁴⁾ There are many reasons for the growing trend towards telework, including efforts to reduce the time, expense and environmental impact of commuting; changes in technology, computerization and electronic communication that enable firms to employ workers in several locations; costs of maintaining large workplaces needed to accommodate employees; facilitating workers who prefer telework owing to physical disability, family responsibilities or other reasons; strategies to reduce absenteeism; and recognition that workers have varying cycles of productivity and creativity. Increased productivity is another factor, and a number of studies have demonstrated that telework can lead to large productivity gains.⁽⁵⁾

The German Government is examining the repercussions of the introduction and growth of computer-based telework, providing practical advice to employers on economic, legal and technical aspects of telework, promoting socially acceptable forms of such work in conjunction with trade unions, and familiarizing workers with the new demands of such work and the health, safety and social security aspects of working at home.⁽⁶⁾ This aims to prevent problems such as "spurious self-employment" and work not subject to social security contributions, and to promote the idea of alternating telework with tasks that allow direct contact with the employer and fellow workers.

The development of new kinds of jobs (computer special effects work, webmasters and web designers) and new products (e-books, DVD format films, etc.) will generate new employment and careers for some, while often harming job prospects for others. No hard data were available to indicate whether such employment outcomes were different for men than for women, or affected other groups unequally, although it might be surmised that older workers bore more than their share of the negative consequences.

Job losses arising from the impact of new technology are difficult to differentiate from those that result from mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, business failures, macroeconomic problems and other factors. They may also be masked by such elements as job creation for new recruits in the same firm or industry. Network-based distribution of media and entertainment products and services will usually affect employment in conventional retail sales, while generating job opportunities in creative, technical, management and direct sales areas.

Certain traditional jobs or professions now have a direct and intimate link with the ICTs. For instance, few print journalists can perform their work without being connected to the Internet,⁽⁷⁾ and many find that mobile phones, pagers, laptops and other devices have become essential tools of the trade. Financial journalists now have to be "wired" to perform their job. Freelance journalists, editors, graphic designers and others may increasingly work almost exclusively using these technologies; indeed, they often find new assignments or jobs through Internet job listings, on-line recruitment sites, and so on. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult to obtain such work without possessing ICT skills and earnings are likely to be lower for people lacking them. In the case of camera operators and technicians, digital technologies have tended to eliminate craft skills and expand the range of other tasks to be performed -- smaller film crews now need to use different skills, and their responsibilities are often wider and less clearly defined. The first wave of new technology in that area apparently had little impact on jobs; but the more recent moves to digitalization seem to have had a greater effect on employment.⁽⁸⁾

Global mergers and acquisitions in the broadcasting and film industries -- and developments in ICTs -- have led to increasing international joint ventures, co-productions and partnerships, with large-scale international investment and distribution links for the product, often with a much larger market in mind. This has affected production processes, financing, marketing, working patterns and conditions of employment in most types of work in the multinational conglomerates and in related enterprises. In industrialized countries, companies such as Disney, Time-Warner, Fox and Viacom are reported to be having an increasing influence on performers' work and collective agreements, and this impact is not always beneficial. Workers often have to accept contracts that involve lower pay and conditions than would normally be the case, rather than have no work at all. The internationalization of production allows possibilities to avoid union agreements, offer local performers in developing countries inferior and inadequate terms, and undercut established union rates.⁽⁹⁾

Government technology policies are not unequivocally geared to regulating the employment effects of ICTs. In most countries, they involve deregulation measures (privatization and liberalization) that cause employment effects which are often negative for the workers concerned. Only as regards the cultural industries -- especially films -- have some countries, notably Canada⁽¹⁰⁾ and France, adopted regulatory policies that aim to protect the national/regional culture industry from free trade (in other words, generally from American imports). In general, national technology policies involve the more or less enthusiastic support of the information society,⁽¹¹⁾ which is usually accompanied by funds for training, research and development, from which companies and workers can benefit. When it comes to accommodating ICT effects, the trade unions have played a major role in attempting to regulate the employment effects of the restructuring process, with a varying degree of support from governments and employers, depending on circumstances.

For many workers, particularly those employed in craft occupations tied to particular technologies, it is clear that a crucial factor is the ability and willingness of people to adapt to change. For some, the change may be difficult, impossible or unacceptable, while for others it is welcome and relatively easy. Many workers may find that their skills do not fit new requirements, or that their job satisfaction is impaired by changes to their duties or to the product or service for which they are responsible. In terms of numbers of jobs lost or gained, the impact of the information technologies is very difficult to estimate, and will vary widely between sectors, occupations and countries. An example of a forecast for Germany predicted that employment in the printed media industry would decline between 1992 and 2010 by 12 per cent, while employment in the electronic media, which includes "traditional" electronic media such as broadcasting as well as the new multimedia, would rise by 62 per cent⁽¹²⁾ -- a net increase of some 8,000 jobs, based on the status quo.⁽¹³⁾

Another forecast, from the United States Department of Labor, estimated that the number of "self-employed professional specialty workers" would grow by 13 per cent between 1996 and 2006, opportunities being especially abundant for writers, artists and entertainers. The fastest growing occupations included desktop publishing specialists (with a 74 per cent growth rate), while the occupations with the largest job declines included typesetters, paste-up and film-stripping workers in printing. The number of radio and TV announcers and newscasters would remain static at 52,000 between 1996 and 2006, with opportunities for growth among designers, writers, artists, producers, actors and entertainers.⁽¹⁴⁾ Table 3.1 gives selected projections in greater detail. However, it should be borne in mind that when this table was compiled, the transition to digital camera equipment for broadcasting and film had already been completed in the United States. This is not the case elsewhere -- especially in developing and transition countries -- where transition (and its employment effect) is still in progress or has been completed more recently.

Table 3.1. Employment by occupation, broadcasting and motion pictures, United States, 1996 and projected 2006 (numbers in thousands of jobs)


Occupation	Employment				Change		Total job openings due to growth and net replacements, 1996-2006¹
	Number		% distribution		Number	%
	1996	2006	1996	2006

Writers, artists and entertainers	1 726	2 138	1.3	1.4	412	23.8	772
Dancers and choreographers	23	30	0.0	0.0	7	28.0	12
Designers	342	431	0.3	0.3	89	26.1	149
Designers, except interior designers	279	361	0.2	0.2	72	25.7	120
Interior designers	63	80	0.0	0.1	17	27.5	28
Musicians	274	366	0.2	0.2	92	33.4	130
Photographers and camera operators	154	180	0.1	0.1	26	16.9	48
Camera operators, television, motion picture, video	20	23	0.0	0.0	3	14.5	6
Photographers	134	157	0.1	0.1	23	17.3	42
Producers, directors, actors and entertainers	105	130	0.1	0.1	25	23.6	48
Radio and TV announcers and newscasters	52	52	0.0	0.0	0	-0.6	21
Reporters and correspondents	60	58	0.0	0.0	-2	-3.1	17
Writers and editors, including technical writers	286	347	0.2	0.2	61	21.2	124
All other professional workers	880	1 104	0.7	0.7	224	25.5	437
¹ Total job openings represent the sum of employment increases and net replacements. If employment change is negative, job openings due to growth are zero and total job openings equal net replacements. Source: United States Department of Labor, 1997, p. 65.

Employment in the production of films and audiovisual products in 1995 stood at over 850,000 in Europe, compared to only 630,000 in 1985.⁽¹⁵⁾ The American motion picture industry employed over 590,000 in September 1995, as against 221,000 in 1985, with a threefold growth in the production/services category (from 101,000 in 1985 to 314,000 in 1995),⁽¹⁶⁾ and now employs more people than the aerospace industry. Some of that growth, which has continued until the time of writing this report, may be attributed to ICT-related work in fields such as computer-generated digital production, visual special effects technologies, and systems and network management.

However, the economic impact of runaway film and television production was estimated at US$10.3 billion in 1998, a fivefold increase since the early 1990s, costing the American entertainment industry more than 60,000 full-time equivalent positions between 1996 and 1998, and a cumulative total of 125,100 positions from 1990 to 1998 (6,900 lost in 1990 and 23,500 in 1998, for example).⁽¹⁷⁾ The jobs lost primarily involved stunt performers and background actors, technicians, costume, make-up and scenery workers, plus even some leading actors.

The ICTs have perhaps reinforced the tendency for actors and other film industry workers to be freelance rather than salaried, and for a deprofessionalization of their jobs. There has also been some reduction in the employment of actors, extras and other staff in films and television because of new technologies that can create special effects to substitute for their work. For performers, this often means they have to be increasingly adaptable to a system which allows them to operate computer-controlled lighting and scene-shifting equipment, given the lack of resources for the theatre industry.

As the number of television channels around the world increases, there has been much more broadcasting of live performances. However, FIA reports that performers are often not paid anything for these broadcasts, and some argue that this can undermine audiences for the theatre and is a poor substitute for live performance itself.⁽¹⁸⁾ Broadcasts can nevertheless generate greater interest in live performance and create new work opportunities. Workers' organizations are striving to ensure that the greater exploitation of performers' ancillary rights in live productions are properly remunerated (videos, cast recordings, broadcasting, and so on) in future, and that efforts are redoubled to prevent unauthorized recordings of live performances and piracy of authorized recordings (see Chapter 7).

All these developments create enormous opportunities for the world's performers. One indication of this is that the French Artists' and Entertainers' Union (Syndicat français des artistes-interprètes (SFA)) reports that the number of performers in France rose from 16,310 in 1985 to 40,437 in 1995;⁽¹⁹⁾ there is more work and the recorded performance has a longer shelf-life. Another is that the opportunities for American entertainers are expected to be especially good (see table 3.2); including growth for musicians (33 per cent), producers, directors, actors and entertainers (24 per cent) and dancers and choreographers (28 per cent).⁽²⁰⁾

Table 3.2. Employment by occupation, performers, United States, 1996 and projected 2006 (numbers in thousands of jobs)


Occupation	Employment				Change		Total job openings due to growth and net replacements, 1996-2006¹
	Number		% distribution		Number	%
	1996	2006	1996	2006

Writers, artists and entertainers	1726	2138	1.3	1.4	412	23.8	772
Dancers and choreographers	23	30	0.0	0.0	7	28.0	12
Musicians	274	366	0.2	0.2	92	33.4	130
Producers, directors, actors and entertainers	105	130	0.1	0.1	25	23.6	48
¹ Total job openings represent the sum of employment increases and net replacements. If employment change is negative, job openings due to growth are zero and total job openings equal net replacements. Source: United States Department of Labor, 1997, p. 65.

A study by the International Federation of Musicians, however, revealed that traditional musicians in the Republic of Korea had found fewer possibilities for employment since the arrival of computers on the musical scene -- some had continued as performers, but many had shifted over to composition or musical arrangement. In India the development and increased availability of electronic instruments had caused a drastic reduction in demand for acoustic musicians -- one musician with a keyboard can now produce a sound equivalent to a hundred acoustic instrumentalists, which has led to a great increase in unemployment among performers. In Japan, the explosion in the availability and use of synthesizers and computer musical instruments -- and the development of karaoke -- had caused a marked growth in unemployment for musicians.⁽²¹⁾

When regular workers in these industries are under threat of unemployment, some may be able to retrain or be redeployed with their existing employer (often as part of an agreement between management and trade unions), while those who lose their jobs may be able to find work with other employers (perhaps after retraining or relocation). However, certain sectors strongly affected by labour-saving technology offer few prospects for displaced workers. An early retirement scheme negotiated by POSPERT, the Greek Broadcasting Workers' Federation, is aimed at minimizing job losses among Greek Radio and Television (ERT) employees; the workforce of 3,350 permanent staff will decline gradually from 1999 to 2003, with around 800 early retirements on favourable terms. This cut in staff may be attributed partly to the impact of technologies, along with other restructuring factors.⁽²²⁾ In Spain, employment in Radio Televisión Española stood at around 9,500 in 1998, as against some 15,000 in 1993. The decline was partly due to restructuring, as well as to technological and market changes, and was given greater impetus by the group's growing indebtedness.⁽²³⁾ Permanent employment in public radio-television corporations in Europe declined substantially over the period 1992-97 in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.⁽²⁴⁾

This professional group generally works more regularly than performers; they are frequently employees, and their union structures and collective agreements vary considerably from those of performers. Like performers, journalists share concerns about the integrity of their work and the possibility of misuse and abuse which technology allows. There has been considerable change in the nature of journalism and employment for journalists in recent years. For example, new media such as on-line news services might lure readers and viewers away from newspapers, radio and television to some degree, though it is hard to separate the effects of new media from other factors. A 1996 survey of personal computer users in the United States found that 78 per cent said they took time away from watching television to use their computers, but predicted that newspapers and general-interest magazines were likely to suffer, as the information they offered became more readily available on the Internet.⁽²⁵⁾

The growth of on-line media may lead ultimately to the decline of at least some of the traditional media, but newspapers and broadcasting companies can launch their own successful ventures in cyberspace, and do things they have never been able to do before, ultimately creating jobs for more journalists.⁽²⁶⁾

Despite some predictions, the demand for reporters and editors continues, and there is no reason to think significant parts of their jobs can be automated in ways that would reduce employment. Meanwhile, technological developments such as the Internet are in many respects helping journalists do their jobs better and more efficiently. However, technological change presents some concerns and challenges. For freelancers, a major question concerns electronic republication rights for their work. Meanwhile, all journalists have reason to be concerned that as new media develop, and technology changes the way news is gathered and distributed, ethics could be trampled in the rush, their independence could be threatened, and public trust in the news media -- already dangerously low -- could decline even further.

Technology has affected the job market for journalists positively in some respects and its impact is unclear in others. There is no doubt that daily newspapers have been losing readership for years. In 1967, about 75 per cent of American adults read daily newspapers. By 1998, the figure had declined to just under 59 per cent.⁽²⁷⁾ Readership of Sunday papers has fallen less rapidly, but is also down. However, this trend goes back far enough to show that on-line media are not to blame, though television may be.

The 1996-2006 employment projections by occupation and media for the United States suggest that opportunities will be especially good for writers and editors (with a 21 per cent growth rate), while radio and TV announcers and newscasters and reporters and correspondents will remain fairly static (see table 3.3).⁽²⁸⁾

Table 3.3. Employment by occupation, media, United States, 1996 and projected 2006 (numbers in thousands of jobs)


Occupation	Employment				Change		Total job openings due to growth and net replacements, 1996-2006¹
	Number		% distribution		Number	%
	1996	2006	1996	2006

Photographers	134	157	0.1	0.1	23	17.3	42
Radio and TV announcers and newscasters	52	52	0.0	0.0	0	-0.6	21
Reporters and correspondents	60	58	0.0	0.0	-2	-3.1	17
Writers and editors, including technical writers	286	347	0.2	0.2	61	21.2	124
¹ Total job openings represent the sum of employment increases and net replacements. If employment change is negative, job openings due to growth are zero and total job openings equal net replacements. Source: United States Department of Labor, 1997, p. 65.

According to the Press Workers' Union of Buenos Aires (UTPBA), the situation for journalists in Argentina deteriorated seriously during 1998-99, with 800 redundancies since the closure of the daily newspaper Perfil in 1998, uncertainty over the future of ATC (Argentina Televisora Color, the only state-owned channel), 12 mergers or takeovers in the newspaper and publishing industries from January 1997 to March 1998, doubts over the future of many radio stations, and complaints about flouting of legal regulations covering the employment status of journalists and other publishing staff.⁽²⁹⁾

Data from Spain indicate changes in employment and the gender distribution of editorial workers from 1992 to 1998 in daily newspapers (see figures 3.1 and 3.2). While there was a clear decline in the labour force, editorial staff and women made up an ever-increasing proportion of employees. During this period, the workforce declined by 15 per cent, while the share of editorial staff rose from 37 per cent to 46 per cent and the proportion of women among them rose from 27 per cent to 29.5 per cent.⁽³⁰⁾ Similarly, the number of journalists registered in Portugal increased tremendously from 1,281 in 1987 to 4,247 in 1997. Of these, women represented 19 per cent in 1987 and 32.8 per cent in 1997.⁽³¹⁾ More women are becoming journalists than ever before, and research carried out for Women in Journalism in the United Kingdom in 1998 found that women under the age of 35 working on newspapers earned an average salary of £32,000 compared with £25,000 for their male counterparts.⁽³²⁾

One example illustrating the employment impact of the internationalization of journalism work is that several Singapore newspapers, including the Straits Times, have been partly sub-edited and designed in satellite offices in other countries, with copy and artwork sent electronically between offices. This has usually been because of a shortage of journalists in Singapore, and has been facilitated by the use of ICTs.

New on-line media are creating new employment opportunities in many industrialized countries (especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Canada, France and others). While employment in the traditional media has remained essentially flat, on-line operations such as CNet, Salon, Slate, Newsbytes, Thestreet.com, Legi-Slate, and others, are taking on new people. CNet employs about 50 reporters, editors, designers and producers, on a salary scale comparable to the daily newspapers in its home city of San Francisco for comparable jobs.⁽³³⁾ Many young journalists are more drawn to on-line media than to traditional and "boring" print.⁽³⁴⁾ On the other hand, journalists working for some of these new-media outlets face challenges their counterparts at newspapers and broadcast outlets do not and have had to fight battles to have on-line media recognized. For instance, they have found it difficult to obtain media accreditation and privileges that other journalists take for granted, like access to the congressional press gallery in Washington, DC.⁽³⁵⁾ Also, jobs in new media are less well defined, and the people who take them need to adapt rapidly and often virtually write their own job descriptions.⁽³⁶⁾

Web journalism is proving to be a lucrative development for many newspaper and magazine writers. According to one observer "people with a media background are going to be in great demand in developing websites. The media are taking over retail and banking websites, which need to be written and designed as if they are newspapers".⁽³⁷⁾

New media replacing old is a theoretical threat to journalism jobs. Another is technology in the workplace reducing the need for people. On this front, journalists have been fortunate. New technology has done little to reduce reliance on reporters and editors in traditional media. It has eliminated many jobs in newspapers over the past 25 years, largely among composing-room and clerical workers. The number of staff required in a newsroom has declined slightly, but journalists are not being replaced by computers.

The impact of technological changes on employment in these fields cannot be assessed in isolation, because they operate in conjunction with processes like liberalization, privatization, globalization and deregulation; they affect employment numbers, the qualitative structure of employment, the organization and quality of work, skill requirements and labour relations.

The European Commission (1993) expected European employment to grow by 5-10 million new jobs by 2010 as a result of investments in ICT.⁽³⁸⁾ These forecasts are speculative and depend on particular assumptions of the effects of legal, political, economic and technological conditions. By focusing employment forecasts on particular sectors, more reliable forecasts can be obtained. Thus Seufert predicted that employment in the printed media industry in Germany would decline between 1992 and 2010 by 12 per cent, while employment in the electronic media (including "traditional" electronic media like broadcasting, and new multimedia) would rise by 62 per cent⁽³⁹⁾ -- print media jobs falling from 416,000 in 1992 to 393,000 in 2000 and 366,000 in 2010, while electronic media jobs were set to rise from 93,000 to 127,000 and then 151,000 in that period -- a net increase of some 8,000 jobs, based on the status quo.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Evolution had already occurred in such industries as book publishing, where some German publishers had moved into areas like software and video development or CD and diskette production, so that further developments in electronic publishing have often involved staff who had previously experienced the transition to non-print products.

It is quite clear that employment in the printed media is declining. Until 1991, employment in the printing and publishing sectors grew steadily in the 12 EU Member States, from 801,632 in 1985 to 882,654 in 1991, but in 1995 employment was down to 817,318, which is 7.4 per cent lower than in 1991.⁽⁴¹⁾ This should not be extrapolated as indicating a steady trend towards a print-less society. The debate about the effects of information society technologies on books, magazines and newspapers has concentrated on the substitution thesis, but although in some segments such as business forms and scientific and professional information a trend towards further substitution is foreseen, there is no indication of a clear trend towards a paperless society. In fact, employment in the graphical industry appears to be falling slightly rather than dramatically; between 1994-95 and 1999, employment in the European graphical sector fell by about 17 per cent in European Union countries and 20 per cent in Europe overall, with a gentler fall in 1998-99 than in previous years.⁽⁴²⁾ The decline in employment can in part be attributed to the higher productivity of automated production processes.

In the graphical industry, employment in the pre-press area has suffered particularly from ICT; for instance, the introduction of desktop publishing (DTP) caused many composition and litho shops to close. Employment has shifted partly to new DTP shops and in-house DTP departments, but there has also been some global relocation of work in this area.⁽⁴³⁾ Indeed, "offshore" typesetting, printing and colour separation have been happening for many years, but the possibilities for this have been greatly increased by the digitization of data and the use of sophisticated ISDN and other links. Employment for graphical workers in countries where workers have a good level of social protection and working conditions has suffered to a large extent, while in developing countries with good printing quality standards and lower wages and benefits, graphical workers have seen some improvements in employment prospects and wages. Research by Mitter and Pearson estimated that in 1992 about 8,000 workers, particularly women, in Latin America, Africa and Asia, were involved in data entry work on behalf of western multinationals.⁽⁴⁴⁾ That number will now certainly be higher, if only because three firms alone (SPI in Manila, and the printing plants of Thomson Press and Macmillan in India) employ more than half that number of workers -- but they serve local clients as well. French, British and other industrialized country publishing companies have long used typesetting, printing and binding companies in Colombia, India, Madagascar, Malta, Mauritius, Morocco, the Philippines and Singapore (among other countries), and are now using emerging suppliers such as China. Increased global competition has led to typesetting costs falling over the past decade by about 70 per cent, with wage levels in industrialized countries driven down in consequence. Mechanical data entry has been threatened by developments in optical character recognition and scanning technology, as well as the increased prevalence of author/publisher-prepared Post Script files or zipped discs that need little or no work by the typesetter. Developing countries specializing in data entry are trying to attract higher value added information processing work from industrialized countries that is less likely to be overtaken by technological developments.

The work process in the pre-press area has been completely transformed by the digital revolution, in industrialized and (to a lesser extent) in developing countries. The conventional pre-press process consisted of separate activities (composition, layout, lithography, retouching, and so on) performed by various categories of technical craftsmen and women. Information communication technologies have resulted in the integration of the entire production process under the control of the DTP operator, who sometimes even controls the printing process using computer-to-press or digital printing systems. In addition, the pre-press area operates in more direct contact with the client, for instance through remote proofing procedures.

The organization of work in the printing area has changed as well, though less fundamentally than in pre-press. Information technology provides the basis for computer- integrated manufacturing. As a consequence, the printer's job in developed countries is splitting into two different typologies.⁽⁴⁵⁾ On the one hand there is a tendency towards modern process management of orders, including pre-press engineering, planning and workflow management; on the other there are press operators running printing presses, including such traditional activities as cleaning, ink and paper supply and tackling minor disruptions. This polarization entails distinct differences in qualification requirements. The job of process manager requires high technical and IT skills as well as project management and teamwork abilities. The press operator will need lower-level technical skills, although specialization in particular types of printing presses may require specific training. In practice, press operators are often being asked to control more complex processes or mind more than one machine -- there may be growing work intensity, increasing use of four-colour printing and sometimes higher quality control standards than before.

The transformation of work processes has had significant consequences for various traditional job categories in industrialized countries. In developing countries, such transformations are generally at an earlier stage and moving at a slower pace, so the information given below is more relevant to industrialized countries. Typesetters and compositors are the categories which have declined most dramatically. Some have been retrained to work as DTP operators, but there is much doubt whether compositors will be in a position to benefit from the expected job growth in the new electronic media, even as regards jobs which are most related to print composition jobs such as website designers. One commentator observed: "Suppose 30 typographers work for a newspaper. One day, they are told that ten of them will have to go because of restructuring. At the same time, they find that the paper will shortly be published on the Internet. If the typographers have already been trained in how to use the Internet, they can keep their jobs."⁽⁴⁶⁾ Furthermore, research on employment in the multimedia industry⁽⁴⁷⁾ in the United States, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden indicates that qualification requirements are generally higher than in the printed media. Many multimedia workers have no background in the graphical industry, and some have found work straight after higher education, whereas technical jobs in the printing industry usually require secondary schooling and vocational training. As a trade union observer in Asia noted "what is fascinating about young multimedia workers -- the kind of people that we must now recruit into trade unions -- is that they are largely self-taught in IT skills, they are very well paid, they expect and want to change jobs and employers very regularly, and they are not in a trade union and see little need for one".⁽⁴⁸⁾ Printing industry workers seeking employment in the multimedia industry are also limited by the fact that, apart from the technical qualifications which they have, other skills are required such as creativity, flexibility, client orientation, communication skills and teamwork skills.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Other occupational categories will benefit in terms of job creation. The fastest growing occupations are mostly highly skilled jobs. For the Netherlands in the 1990s, these are expected to include: journalists, authors and announcers (19.9 per cent growth); system analysts, programmers, system supervisors (16.5 per cent); information service and media specialists (14.2 per cent); photographers, film-makers, designers (13.1 per cent); and visual and performing artists (12 per cent).⁽⁵⁰⁾

Between 1996 and 2006, the fastest growing occupations in the United States are likely to include desktop publishing specialists (with a 74 per cent growth rate),while the occupations with the largest job declines include typesetters, paste-up and film-stripping workers in printing. Here the projected reduction in employment can be directly linked to technology, as the major declines are among those directly challenged by the digital revolution -- typesetters, paste-up workers, photo-engravers, camera operators, letterpress printing press operators, platemakers and film-stripping workers (see table 3.4).⁽⁵¹⁾

Table 3.4. Employment by occupation, printing and publishing, United States, 1996 and projected 2006 (numbers in thousands of jobs)


Occupation	Employment				Change		Total job openings due to growth and net replacements, 1996-2006¹
	Number		% distribution		Number	%
	1996	2006	1996	2006

Printing workers, precision	141	124	0.1	0.1	-17	-12.1	44
Bookbinders	4	4	0.0	0.0	-1	-15.0	1
Pre-press printing workers, precision	123	106	0.1	0.1	-16	-13.4	41
Compositors and typesetters, precision	6	3	0.0	0.0	-3	-50.3	1
Job printers	15	15	0.0	0.0	1	4.9	3
Paste-up workers	15	4	0.0	0.0	-11	-75.0	2
Desktop publishing specialists	30	53	0.0	0.0	22	73.5	27
Photo-engravers	5	3	0.0	0.0	-2	-35.8	1
Camera operators	11	10	0.0	0.0	-2	-14.9	2
Film strippers, printing	26	7	0.0	0.0	-20	-75.0	4
Platemakers	14	12	0.0	0.0	-2	-15.1	2
All other printing workers, precision	13	14	0.0	0.0	0.0	1.1	2
Printing, binding, and related workers	383	394	0.3	0.3	11	2.9	81
Bindery machine operators and set-up operators	81	85	0.1	0.1	4	4.9	16
Pre-press printing workers, production	19	8	0.0	0.0	-11	-56.2	3
Photo-engraving and lithographic machine operators and tenders	6	5	0.0	0.0	-1	-9.5	1
Typesetting and composing machine operators and tenders	14	3	0.0	0.0	-10	-75.1	2
Printing press operators	215	226	0.2	0.1	11	5.0	45
Letterpress operators	14	9	0.0	0.0	-5	-34.8	2
Offset lithographic press operators	76	80	0.1	0.1	4	5.9	15
Printing press machine setters, operators and tenders	119	129	0.1	0.1	10	8.6	27
All other printing press setters and set-up operators	6	7	0.0	0.0	1	14.4	2
Screen printing machine setters and set-up operators	29	31	0.0	0.0	2	6.1	6
All other printing, binding and related workers	38	44	0.0	0.0	5	14.0	11
¹ Total job openings represent the sum of employment increases and net replacements. If employment change is negative, job openings due to growth are zero and total job openings equal net replacements. Source: United States Department of Labor, 1997, pp. 73-74.

These categories have all been affected to some degree by the trends in ICTs, work organization, subcontracting, casualization, mergers and acquisitions, globalization, privatization, flexibility, and so on. There has been a general shift in the balance of power in broadcasting, film and media enterprises away from workers and trade unions and towards employers, and away from centralized collective bargaining. This has meant that camera operators, technicians, scenery workers, clerical and other staff are also concerned by changes, but it has not been possible to examine these effects in any detail.

In general, the increased frequency of precarious employment arrangements in the sector -- which is partly a consequence of technological changes -- makes it more difficult for workers with family responsibilities to arrange regular and suitable childcare. This has often had a negative impact on the employment prospects of women. Employment opportunities for women in the performing arts are particularly age-sensitive for several reasons, and this may be a further disincentive to young women seeking such work.

New technologies, the Single European Market, (increased) unemployment and changing work patterns have all influenced some of the radical changes occurring in the media sector in the European Union, often having a negative impact on women. Among these changes is a large increase in the importance of commercial broadcasting companies more responsive to the market than to public scrutiny; a rise in the share of independent production companies; steadily decreasing permanent, full-time staff and a growing number of short-term or freelance contracts -- often hired directly by individual units so that no centralized personnel records of these workers are held; and major restructuring within public broadcasting companies, thus making equal opportunity issues a low priority. Although the independent sector may offer new career possibilities to women, some discriminatory practices found in older broadcasting institutions have been carried over to the independent sector, and men continue to occupy the majority of decision-making positions, according to a European Commission pilot study on the status of women in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.⁽⁵²⁾ Kate Holman, former Coordinator of the European Commission's Steering Committee for Equal Opportunities in Broadcasting, noted that: "Attitudes among management and staff can best be changed, to achieve a more sympathetic workplace ethos, by the use of accurate data and interestingly presented material to demonstrate that gender equality in broadcasting contributes to both commercial success and better programmes."⁽⁵³⁾ Information on women journalists in Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom is provided earlier in this chapter.

In the United States in 1997, women comprised 15 per cent of all film writers, producers, directors, cinematographers and editors, while in television the figures were slightly higher with 21 per cent of all creators, executive producers, producers, directors, writers, editors and directors of photography for top-rated programmes.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Canadian statistics indicated gender equality in creative and performing arts in 1996 overall, but with women being more numerous among dancers (86 per cent), musicians, singers and visual artists, and in a minority among producers, directors, conductors, actors and other occupations. Among writers, translators and public relations professionals, women were in the majority among all professions except journalism (48 per cent). However, among photographers, graphic arts technicians and technical occupations in film, broadcasting and the performing arts, they were in the minority in all categories, at around 30 per cent.⁽⁵⁵⁾

With regard to developing countries, women in the Indian film industry tend to have fewer opportunities and earn lower pay than men, although there is evidence that young actresses earn higher pay than their male counterparts and work more regularly. However, older actresses find it much more difficult to obtain employment. In general, Indian women are now more able to find work as producers, directors and technicians than in the past, with more openings in television than in film. Women account for about one-third of the acting profession in film and television in Mumbai, around 50 per cent of singers, 40 per cent of dancers and less than 1 per cent of musicians.⁽⁵⁶⁾

Recent structural changes in media industries and especially the introduction of new technologies have increased the number of freelancers in this field. Large broadcasting and publishing companies are increasingly downsizing in order to remain economically viable, and outsourcing often to small teams (for example the BBC is required to outsource 25 per cent of its programme production to independent contractors). The independent sector may provide women with more opportunities because of greater flexibility in working hours, and so on, but discrimination against women may still be a problem. It would appear that -- compared to women -- men tend to remain more fully self-employed in media and entertainment, and there is concern that the loss of full-time permanent employment in large broadcasting companies would have a very negative impact on future training and qualification of women in the industry.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Owing to women's increased familiarity with new technology in daily life applications, and greater encouragement for girls to acquire computer skills at school, the perceived male-female divide in technological qualifications may disappear in the near future.⁽⁵⁸⁾

1. For example ILO: Symposium on Multimedia Convergence, Final Report, Geneva, 1997; M. Castells: The rise of the network society (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996); and C. Freeman and L. Soete: Work for all or mass unemployment? (London, Pinter, 1994).

4. Walter Durling, in a personal communication sent to the ILO on 6 September 1999.

5. Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs: "The information society in the 21st century: Experiences and suggestions for government action in Germany", by J. Warnken (Bonn, 1999).

6. See W. Krasilowsky and S. Shemel: This business of music (New York, Billboard Books, 1995).

7. See United Nations Development Programme: Human Development Report, 1999 (New York, 1999). Sweden has 68 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, whereas Eritrea, Cambodia, Haiti and many other countries have fewer than one per 100 inhabitants.

8. See, for example, B. Motzney: "Towards a new partnership for government, employers and workers", in ILO, op. cit., pp. 21-24.

9. Excluding South Africa. T. Butterly: "Use of the Internet is growing in Africa", in NUA Internet Surveys (Dublin), 18 Feb. 1998, on website http://www.nua.ie. It should be noted that such estimates -- and others contained in this report -- are illustrative of trends, but it is impossible to verify the assumptions, definitions, methods, data, model, sampling error and coverage of these surveys, and the research requirements of the clients.

10. C. Fox: "Hi-tech for the grassroots", in Sources (Paris, UNESCO), No. 114, Jul.-Aug. 1999, p. 11.

11. "Viacom and CBS to merge in $36 bn deal", in Financial Times (London), 8 Sep. 1999, p. 1.

12. Total GNP 1997 (Atlas method), as given in CD-ROM form in World Bank: World development indicators, 1999 (Washington, DC, 1999).

13. National Geographic (Washington, DC), Aug. 1999. Mumbai is the official new name for Bombay.

14. Cited by R. Cribb: "Rewired -- Technology has transformed 20th century life, and we're only beginning to understand the implications", in The Toronto Star, 29 Aug. 1999, p. B-4.

15. Subcommittee on Communications: "Wired to win! Canada's positioning within the world's technological revolution", Report of the Canadian Senate's Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, Ottawa, Canadian Senate, May 1999, p. 4.

17. European Association of Development Institute: EADI Newsletter (Geneva), 1998/1, p. 33.

18. UNCTAD: Becoming a globally competitive player: The case of the music industry in Jamaica, by J. Kozul-Wright and L. Stanbury (Geneva, 1998), Discussion Paper No. 138.

19. UNESCO: World Communication Report: The media and the challenge of the new technologies (Paris, 1997), Preface.

20. A. White: "Journalism", in ILO: Encyclopaedia of Occupational Safety and Health, Vol. 3 (Geneva, 1998).

21. R. Seppänen: "Books and CDs account for half of purchases over the Net", in The Bookseller (London), 13 Aug. 1999, p. 11.

22. "A national of shopkeepers", in The Economist (London), 21 Aug. 1999, p. 52.

25. Many such jobs in the United States are for performers employed on terms and conditions outlined by the Screen Actors Guild in their Interactive Media Agreement (see http://www.sag.com/interactivetext.html), amended 1993-95.

26. See, for example, Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie: Karrierewege in der Multimedia-Wirtschaft: Qualifikationsanforderungen und Arbeitsmarktentwicklung in einer Zukunftsbranche (Berlin, BMWi Dokumentation), No. 464, Sep. 1999.

27. L. Gray and R. Seeber (eds.): Under the stars: Essays on labor relations in arts and entertainment (ILR Press, Ithaca, New York, 1996).

28. P. Miller and K. Sand: The status of the performer in 1997 (International Federation of Actors, London, 1997, unpublished).

29. A. Parisotto: "Transnational corporations and the emerging global media markets", in Y. Aharoni (ed.): The changing role of state intervention in services in an era of open international markets (New York, New York State University Press, 1997).

1. A. McKinlay and B. Quinn: "Management, technology and work in commercial broadcasting, c. 1979-98", in Technology, Work and Employment (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999), Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 2-17.

3. D. Nelson: Journalism and new media technologies, Unpublished background paper prepared for the ILO, 1999.

5. M. Collins: "You've got to be joking", in The Guardian (London), 6 Sep. 1999.

6. J. Gibson: "Smith signals TV free-for-all", in The Guardian (London), 18 Sep. 1999, p. 1.

7. In a keynote address to the Cambridge Convention of the Royal Television Society, 17 September 1999, on website http://www.rts.org.uk/rts/html/magazine/smith.htm, retrieved on 23 September 1999.

10. Z. Lanara: The media and public braodcasting in Greece (Athens, POSPERT, 1999), unpublished.

11. "The fight for radio rights in Argentina", in Action (London), No. 214, Mar. 1999.

12. "Mixed-media companies fill the space", in Financial Times (London), 8 Oct. 1998, p. 2.

14. "Brussels probes state TV in Italy, France", in Financial Times (London), 21 July 1999.

15. Reflected in discussions at the 3rd Media and Entertainment International (MEI) Congress, Berlin, 7-8 October 1999.

16. International Federation of Actors (FIA): Actors and the international audiovisual production industries (London, 1999), p. 14, unpublished.

18. Directors Guild of America/Screen Actors Guild: Runaway production study report, on website http://www.sag.org, retrieved 20 October 1999; and FIA: Actors and the international audiovisual production industries, op. cit., 1999.

20. Screen Actors Guild: "SAG applauds appointment of special congressional subcommittee to address US runaway production", Press release dated 14 July 1999.

24. Based on G. Neil: New media: Opportunity or threat? The performers' perspective, Unpublished paper for the ILO, 1999, in which he quotes: G. Sweeney, Jr. and J.T. Williams, in Entertainment and Sports Lawyer (American Bar Association) 1999.

25. Miller and Sand, op. cit., p. 13. Indeed, The Guardian Weekly (21-27 Oct. 1999) reported that the Arts Council of Great Britain was to give the country's near-bankrupt symphony orchestras £10 million to clear their debts and provide funding for 2000-01; in return, the orchestras had to offer "a more flexible way of working".

26. International Federation of Musicians: Etude sur la situation des artistes-interprètes de la musique en Asie, en Afrique et en Amerique latine (Paris, 1998), pp. 119-123, unpublished.

27. Royal National Theatre: Third System and Employment Action (London, 1999), unpublished.

28. P. O'Reilly, personal communication to the ILO, 25 Aug. 1999, updating "The implications of multimedia convergence on future skill requirements" from ILO, 1997.

30. "Weekly Web News", in The Digital Edge (27 Aug. 1999), on website htttp://www.naa.org/ edge/webnews.

31. See "Newspapers and the Internet", in The Economist (London), 17 July 1999, p.18.

32. C. Dornan: "Between the rock and a hard-up place", in The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 16 Sep. 1999, p. T1.

33. R.E. Schmid: Journalism and the Internet: A new world of information (Associated Press, Jan. 1998).

38. GFC Net: International study of journalists' attitudes toward using technology (New York, 1999), on website http://www.gfcnet.com.

39. S. Kirsner: "Covering cyberspace", in Editor & Publisher, 14 Nov. 1998, p. 30.

40. Quoted from the first NetMedia Conference attendance leaflet, City University, London, 1995.

41. Nicholas and Williams: Journalism and the Internet (London, City University, 1998). It was followed by a similar survey of all media newsrooms (TV, radio, print, new media) in Wallace: Use of online services in the newsroom (London, City University Net Media Survey Report, 1998).

46. D. Richardson, "Printing, photography and reproduction industry: General profile", in ILO: Encyclopaedia of Occupational Safety and Health, op. cit., Vol. 3. p. 85.2.

48. PIA (Printing Industries of America): Bridging to a digital future, Cannes, Comprint International Conference, 1994; and PIRA (Printing Industries Research Association, United Kingdom): Communication 2000: Visions and strategies for printers and publishers, Cannes, Comprint International Conference, 1994.

49. See European Graphical Federation (EGF): New media, new challenge! (Brussels, EGF, 1998), for example.

50. Koninklijk Verbond van Grafische Ondernemingen (Royal Association of Graphical Enterprises -- KVGO): Grafische Opdrachtgeversonderzoek 1998 (Amstelveen, KVGO, 1998).

53. R. McArthur: The internationalisation of print: Trends, socioeconomic impact and policy (Geneva, ILO, 1990).

55. Data from European Commission: Panorama of EU Industry 97 (Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1997); and from DEBA Database (Eurostat) and a number of European Trade Associations.

56. P. Leisink: "The international restructuring of the media industries", in P. Leisink (ed.): Globalization and labour relations (Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, 1999).

57. Association of American Publishers: "Book sales total £23.03 billion in 1998", on website http://www.publishers.org/home/stats/index.htm, retrieved 1 September 1999.

58. G. Ward: "You can't stop the countdown to digital", in British Printer (Tonbridge, Kent), July 1999, p. 5.

59. S. Hitchcock et al.: "A survey of STM online journals 1990-95: The calm before the storm", on Internet http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk/survey/survey.html, Southampton, United Kingdom, 1996.

1. Based on remarks by Robert Zachariasiewicz, in written comments to the ILO dated 26 August 1999. He added that the high level of demand for such workers in the United States is illustrated by the growing pressure from employers to admit more temporary foreign workers into the country through the H-1B programme -- the ceiling for admissions was raised from 65,000 workers in 1998 to 115,000 in 1999, but total admissions have once again exceeded the cap, resulting in a backlog of applications. This reflects the extraordinary tightness of the IT labour market in general.

2. See V. di Martino: The high road to teleworking (Geneva, ILO, forthcoming).

4. Personal communication to the ILO from the Office of National Statistics, London, 4 October 1999, based on the Labour Force Survey (covering employees and self-employed whose work from home required both a telephone and a computer).

5. ILO: "Telework", in Conditions of Work Digest, Vol. 9, 1990/1 (Geneva, 1990).

7. It has been estimated that 87 per cent of print journalists were connected in 1998 -- Internet Index No. 23, 28 Feb. 1999, on website http://www.openmarket.com/intindex/99-02.htm.

10. B. Motzney: "Convergence and content in the information society: The Canadian experience", in ILO: Labour Education (Geveva, 1998), Special issue, No. 110-111, pp. 5-11.

11. B. Kahin and E. Wilson (eds.): National information infrastructure initiatives (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, MIT Press, 1997).

12. W. Seufert: "Beschäftigungswachtstum in der Informationgesellschaft?", in Media Perspektiven (Frankfurt-am-Main), 1996, 9/96, pp. 499-506.

13. German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), quoted by J. Warnken in: Labour Education, op. cit., p. 20.

14. United States Department of Labor: "Employment outlook: 1996-2006", in Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC, 1997), p. 65.

16. United States Department of Commerce figures, as quoted in "Content as a new growth industry", OECD Working Papers (Paris), Vol. VI, No. 46, 1998, table 8, p. 18.

19. International Federation of Actors: Compilation of survey data on conditions in live performance, World Live Performance Conference, Lisbon, 1999 (London, 1999), p. iii.

23. Federación de Servicios UGT: Estrategias de concentración y nuevas tecnolugías en los medios de comunicación (Madrid, Secretaria de Gabinetes, Documentación y Estudios, 1999), pp. 75-76 and 164-165.

24. European Audiovisual Observatory: Statistical Yearbook, Strasbourg, 1999, p. 75.

26. P. Boutie: "Will this kill that?", in Communication World, 1 Apr. 1996, p. 34; H. Hafrash: "Will the growing popularity of the Internet kill newspapers?", in Saudi Gazette, 17 June 1999.

29. Personal communication to the ILO in Spanish from Daniel das Neves, Secretary General of UTPBA, 2 September 1999.

30. Informe Anual de la Comunicación 1997-1998: Estado y tendencias de los medios en España (Madrid, Grupo Zeta, 1998).

31. European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy and the Arts (ERICarts): "Women in management or artistic decision-making positions in broadcasting", on website http://www.ericarts.org/women/staaudio.html, retrieved 24 August 1999.

32. L. Brooks: "So far, so feminised", in The Guardian (London), G2 Europe, 18 Oct. 1999, p. 10.

33. S. Outing: "Why online journalism is a great career choice", in Editor & Publisher, 1 May 1999, p. 49.

34. A. Marks: "Internet redefines news business for many young journalists", in Christian Science Monitor, 8 Aug. 1999.

35. D. Noack: "Bias against online news reporters: The second class citizens of journalism", in Editor & Publisher, Jan. 1998, p. 13.

36. P. Zollman: "New media hiring: Vets offer tips", in Editor & Publisher, 21 Mar. 1998, p. 20.

37. Former Financial Times journalist Nick Denton, now running his own Internet venture, quoted in J. Robins: "How to create a website and get ahead in journalism", The Independent (London), 27 July 1999.

38. European Commission: Growth, competitiveness, employment (White Paper), Brussels, 1993.

39. W. Seufert: "Beschäftigungswachstum in der Informationgesellschaft?", in Media Perspektiven (Frankfurt-am-Main), 1996, 9/96, pp. 499-506.

40. German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), quoted by J. Warnken in Labour Education, ILO, op. cit.

42. According to the EGF Collective Bargaining Survey, quoted in European Graphical Federation: Collective bargaining: What's new in 1999? (Brussels, 1999), pp. 6 and 10-11.

43. European Commission, op. cit., s. 25, pp. 66-68; and U. Huws, N. Jager and S. O'Regan: Teleworking and globalization (London, Institute for Employment Studies, 1999).

44. S. Mitter and R. Pearson: Global information processing: The emergence of software services and data entry jobs in selected developing countries (Geneva, ILO, 1992), p. 22.

45. BPIF (British Printing Industry Federation): Managing technology -- Strategies for profitable growth (London, 1997).

46. Olav Boye, International Secretary of the International Graphical Federation, quoted in S. Grumiau: "Life-long learning", in Trade Union World (Brussels, ICFTU), No. 3, Mar. 1998, p. 24.

47. Respectively -- A. Scott: "Patterns of employment in southern California's multimedia and digital visual effects industry", Paper presented at the Multimedia Workshop (Utrecht University), 1997; R. Hummel: "Which multimedia jobs?", in Medien Journal, 1998, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 3-12; L. Michel: "Qualification requirements within professional multimedia production", in idem., pp. 13-24; P. Leisink: "From media to multimedia industry in the Netherlands", in idem., pp. 25-33; and A. Sandberg: New media in Sweden (Solna, Arbetslivsinstitutet, 1998).

48. Report on a symposium on multimedia convergence, organized by the Asian and Pacific organizations of Communications International and the International Graphical Federation, 19-21 January 1998, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, p. 3, on website http://www.cwu.org/cwu/kuala.htm.

49. Hummel, 1998, op. cit., pp. 3-12; Michel, 1998, op. cit., pp. 13-24; and Leisink, 1998, op. cit., pp. 25-33.

50. CED-SER (Commissie van Economische Deskundigen SER): Arbeidsmarkt, informatietechnologie en internationalisering (The Hague, SER, 1996), p. 51.

52. Quoted in Women in arts and media professions: European comparisons, 1st European Expert Conference, Königswinter/Bonn, 1997, Project Papers No. 1, p. 12.

53. K. Holman: Equal opportunities for women in broadcasting, Paper presented to the 1st European Expert Conference on "Women in arts and media professions", Königswinter/Bonn, 1997.

54. According to Dr. Martha M. Lauzen and Women in Film, on website http://www.wif.org, retrieved 2 October 1999.

55. Statistics Canada: "Labour force 15 years and over by detailed occupation (based on the 1991 Standard Occupational Classification) and sex, for Canada, 1996 Census (20 per cent sample data)", SOC code F, on website http://www.statcan.ca, retrieved 21 July 1999.

56. Arunaraje: Role of women in the film and television industry (Mumbai, India), pp. 4-5, unpublished.

57. M. Woolf, quoted in: Women in arts and media professions: European comparisons, op. cit., p. 12.

Symposium on Information Technologies in the Media and Entertainment Industries: Their Impact on Employment, Working Conditions and Labour-management Relations

Report for discussion

Symposium on Information Technologies in the Media
and Entertainment Industries:
Their Impact on Employment, Working Conditions
and Labour-management Relations