"With that amount of money," said McNutt, "I would guess this had to come straight from (Sarandos) and the CEO (Reed Hastings). Netflix, notoriously tight-lipped, has not responded to dot.LA's request for comment. "I think," surmised Beitcher, "they needed to decide to do something that was more sustainable for the industry workforce, and a greater reflection of the compassion that they were feeling for them, and the gratitude that they had for the work they've done." Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix, told CNN on Sunday that when that happened, "the first thing we did was make sure that everybody on those crews knew that they were being paid for the next two weeks." "Based on my brief conversations with them," said Beitcher, "this was something on their minds from the moment production started shutting down." Both first heard directly from Netflix the day before the public announcement. Neither McNutt nor Beitcher had much advance notice of the incoming succor. Photp courtesy Aircam/ Upfront Summit Enter Netflix That'd be March 12th, meaning a year's worth of calls for help in less than two weeks.Ĭhief Content OfficerTed Sarandos at this year's Upfront Summit in Los Angeles. "As of the start of this week," continued McNutt, "we're up to over 5,000 calls, just since the Thursday when this started." The Actors Fund serves members across the entertainment community, providing such social services as emergency financial relief, counseling and affordable housing. To give a sense of the scale we are dealing with right now, typically we help 5,000 people a year across our programs." County: set designers, hairdressers, construction workers, performers, writers. He said Hollywood is a "huge community of people who are basically living middle-class lives, earning around the median income of L.A. Keith McNutt is western region director of the Actors Fund, also chosen by Netflix to receive $1 million. "With the exception of writers - some writers' rooms are still operating virtually - I'd say every other job category is out of work right now." But across the county, and with no end in sight, crew members, performers, caterers and more are struggling.įell off a cliff," said Bob Beitcher, President and CEO of the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF), one of the external groups selected by Netflix to receive $1 million. Not all such jobs have been upended by the coronavirus. Depending how you slice the data, the collective output of these jobs can amount to north of a quarter of LA County's GDP. For nearly every job in the still broader creative sector (about 400,000), there is yet another job that either supports or is induced by it. LA County has over 120,000 workers in the film industry, and about 258,000 in the broader entertainment sector, according to the 2020 Otis College Report on the Creative Economy. IATSE, a union representing about 150,000 behind-the-scenes entertainment workers, has committed $2.5 million. SAG-AFTRA, an actors union, and the Producers Guild of America, have each set up their own relief funds to receive donations. Several other organizations are also supporting the effort to put cash in the pockets of sidelined workers.
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