The Stage

Performers TV drops charges after Stage approach

Published Tuesday 9 March 2010 at 15:49 by Matthew Hemley

A new television production company that was planning to charge performers upwards of £150 to appear on screen has been forced into a u-turn on its pricing structure, after questions were raised about the amounts it was quoting.

Performers TV was calling on aspiring singers, rappers, dancers and comedians to record five-minute videos for a series of shows it was planning to broadcast on the Sky platform, at a cost of £150. It said these videos would be shown twice, but could be repeated for a fee of £25 a minute, with a minimum of two repeats having to be purchased at a time.

However, the company has now dropped the fees, after The Stage approached it with concerns from Equity.

The union had claimed that Performers TV was targeting “individuals with little or no experience” of how the entertainment industry works, and warned that any individual performer wanting to put their material on the company’s proposed Sky channel would have to pay a “very large amount of money to gain any benefit whatsoever”.

Amanda Joseph, who is one of the company directors at Performers TV, said it would now be launching with a show called Initiation, which will not cost performers anything, accept for a £30 administration fee.

She denied the changes were a result of the approach made by The Stage, and instead claimed the decision was based on the fact that there was not enough interest to push ahead with original plans.

“Basically we did not get the response we would have liked from advertising in places like MySpace, Singers Pro and from our agent. We think that this was due to the channel not being established, making it hard for any performer to judge whether their money would be well spent. Therefore, we made the decisionto go with one show to get us in the public eye before we launch the rest,” she said.

She added that since the charges had been dropped, Performers TV had been contacted by Deuce Management and Promotion, which she said wanted to work with Performers TV to advertise its services to “over 17,000 singers and bands” on its books.

In the terms and conditions of Performers TV, which are listed on its website, the company states that any footage it records is the property of Performers TV, but that the rights can be purchased by an artist for the cost of £1,000.

Joseph said that while Performers TV plans to operate a “full blown” channel on Sky, the programme Initiation is being made with the intention of selling it to other broadcasters.