Online writers to benefit from guidelines on recommended pay for web content

Published Tuesday 6 May 2008 at 15:55 by Matthew Hemley

Writers of online dramas are to benefit from a landmark Writers Guild document that sets out recommended rates of pay for creating web-only content.

The document is a reflection of the growing number of internet drama that is being created, and outlines the minimum writers responsible for creating web content should receive.

As well as aiding the writers of stand alone web dramas, the document’s guidelines will help guild members who are commissioned to create content that complements existing television and radio shows.

This may include character blogs, fictitious diaries or additional scenes for existing television dramas that are only shown online.

The guild said it plans to push for the recommendations to be adopted as a formal agreement that can be used in particular by broadcasters, who are ordering more and more internet-only content as part of multi-platform commissioning drives.

Assistant general secretary Naomi MacDonald said: “It is such a new area we don’t know how many people watch these online shows or how successful they will be, but it is beginning to take off. Hopefully in a year or two, when we know more about how they work, we’ll be able to come up with some minimum terms that will be agreed by broadcasters rather than just guidelines from the guild.”

MacDonald said the guild had published the new payment recommendations after receiving an increasing number of calls from writers about what they should be receiving when writing outside of the television and radio mediums.

“For little nuggets of drama online that are only two minutes long, we have never had any guidelines. That is something we wanted to address and we hope to give members some idea of what they should expect in terms of pay,” she said.

The guidelines suggest daily rates of £250 to £350 for writers creating online copy, or hourly rates of £40 to £50. However, MacDonald said members could negotiate upwards of these figures.

It also includes information about the rights of writers whose work is used online.

Assistant general secretary Anne Hogben described the new guidelines as a “giant leap forward” and added: “People are accustomed to the fact they get everything free of the internet, but how will professional writers survive at that rate?”