From my experience working in a production house in the 90s, the pricing of voiceover artists in Singapore used to be very straightforward. A flat rate for a 30-second script, or a 5-minute corporate video was very much the norm. And rightfully so – with Singapore’s broadcast mediums being only free-to-air (FTA) TV and radio stations, we certainly weren’t spoiled for choice. But even ads going on TV, cinema and radio didn’t attract an additional premium, what’s referred to as ‘loading’, which makes me wonder…. Anyway, back to the article.
The new millennium brought about a complete shift in TV and entertainment offerings. Some of us might remember the days prior to smart TVs. Even our phones weren’t that smart yet (at least our brains still worked well though). If you had one of those little black boxes from Singapore’s first cable TV service provider, StarHub, you were doing well to keep up! Through the device, you could watch films on HBO or documentaries on National Geographic or Discovery Networks and Cartoon Network was a favourite among the kids. All very exciting stuff back then!
This new era also brought with it some challenges for Singapore based production houses budgeting for content creation as voiceover artists and screen talent now needed to know on which networks and media platforms the content would be aired, such as FTA, Discovery, HBO, cinema, and radio. These days, we also have online, website, social media and out-of-home (OOH) in the mix…. And the list will keep getting longer. There is one ‘platform’ that everyone seems to be conveniently forgetting however. Internal.
On several occasions I have put out casting calls for voiceover artists as well as actors for internal content. The details are spelt out clearly. ‘For internal use’, ‘eLearning’, ‘For use only by school’s students’, ‘Audience is only the client’s employees’, to name a few descriptions. Much to my amusement, I keep getting that same ‘loaded question’ over and over again; “What’s the loading?”. My answer, “There is no loading – it’s for internal use”. What’s with the fixation on loading? No, I’m not asking – I know. Basically, “How much money can I make from this?” Nothing wrong with wanting to make money, we’re all out there trying to do the same thing, but I think it can and should be tempered with this thing called fairness.
So, let’s look at the basis for adding loading fees. For an advertisement that’ll be shown on TV (FTA and say, Discovery Networks), in cinemas, on radio, OOH and on social media, that’s six mediums, or media platforms. And it’s very fair to expect loading fees on top of the session fee for these. Why? Well, simply because it’s an advertisement and will be seen by potential customers on all of these mediums, who might in turn buy the product or service that’s being advertised. An ad is a marketing tool with the objective of making money for the advertiser after all, so it is only fair that the talent is paid accordingly for their time as well as the content’s exposure.
Now, let’s look at content for internal use. It could be for the training of a company’s staff, or as part of a learning module in a school, or an eLearning module for the Singapore Exchange’s Central Depository (this is for people interested in trading stocks – they can only do so if they sit and pass a set number of modules). Or the content could be for an industry awards submission, or a case study usually done by a business consultancy or agency to show how effective an initiative was. This type of content (apart from the production house or studio putting it together, the talent involved and a set internal audience) never sees the light of day.
Categorically speaking, the objective of content can either be to make money for the content owner, or it is an expense incurred by the content owner for education, research or industry awards submission. And these objectives should play a big part in deciding whether or not there should be any loading fees added.
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