Ken Ziffren has logged greater than 50 years in Los Angeles’ authorized neighborhood. He’s represented a variety of gamers from the late nice showrunner entrepreneur Stephen J. Cannell to the Tv Academy to the Administrators Guild of America. He’s been on each business fee conceivable, together with a stint as L.A.’s movie czar below former Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Ziffren, a 1965 graduate of UCLA Regulation College, has an extended and proud observe file as a mentor, consiglieri and key business strategist on thorny points. One in every of his strongest legacies is UCLA Regulation’s annual Leisure Symposium, which Ziffren launched again in 1976 as a discussion board to show college students to the real-world challenges and alternatives for attorneys in Hollywood. The occasion is now produced by UCLA Regulation’s Ziffren Institute for Media, Leisure, Expertise and Sports activities Regulation, which was established a couple of dozen years in the past. What started as a modest gathering in a UCLA Regulation College convention room has grown right into a daylong occasion with an array of high audio system and about 600 attendees. The golden anniversary version will unfold Thursday at UCLA’s Schoenberg Auditorium, with audio system together with Think about Leisure’s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Tom Wolzien, Donald S. Passman, Linda Lichter and lots of extra.
Right here, Ziffren weighs in on the tumultuous state of leisure regulation within the age of AI, streaming and media consolidation. And he displays on how a lot has modified within the business because the first symposium was held on the midpoint of the Me decade.
I wish to discuss hot-button authorized points however let’s begin with the UCLA Regulation symposium. Fifty years of something is an achievement in academia. What do you bear in mind in regards to the first gathering? What was the burning difficulty of the day?
In ‘76 we had two things in the TV world that have disappeared. There was a federal tax credit underlying on film and TV. The other thing was [the FCC’s] monetary curiosity in syndication rule that prohibited networks from having a monetary curiosity in any program that they telecast. I’m scorching to trot to attempt to deliver again these two issues, as a result of the mix of these issues I imagine led to one of the best instances in our historical past.
Do you suppose one thing like fin-syn or some sort of programming set-aside for impartial producers is workable within the trendy content material eco-system? The fin-syn guidelines started to sundown within the early Nineteen Nineties. It’s been some time.
Sure. The concept can be {that a} streamer has to commit to hold X p.c of its schedule for independents. Shelf area is one measurement, or one other is price range. They might commit to hold X p.c of the programming from impartial manufacturing firms which have little interest in streaming. After which half two of that’s that the one rights the streamer will get from the impartial producer are first-cycle. Not rights going out 20 years, however one thing that’s extra commonplace. Within the previous days, again in ‘76, it was 4 or 4 and a half years, which at that time limit meant 88 to 100 episodes.
So all of that favorable regulatory and tax coverage in 1976, that was a catalyst that put wind within the sails of filmed leisure?
Sure.
What do you suppose are going to be probably the most vibrant matters at this 12 months’s fiftieth anniversary symposium?
I’m on a panel with two very luminous luminary sorts. Don Passman and Linda Lichter and I are going to do a glance again and look ahead on what’s modified in 50 years. We’ll have an AI presentation, we’ll have an ethics presentation. After which our visitor audio system are Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.
Through the years that you simply’ve been concerned with UCLA and with college students, what are your observations about what has modified about their information and understanding of the business. Do regulation college students in the present day know extra about how the leisure enterprise works than they did 50 years in the past?
Let me do a then and now comparability. I used to be in a position 50 years in the past to have a two minute dialog the place we coated all the problems of a community pickup of a pilot to collection, as a result of the one points that then existed have been how a lot for the pilot, how a lot for the collection and the way a lot for the [license fee] bumps every year. Every thing else, due to fin-syn, was in essence a printed settlement from every of the three networks, and no one modified a phrase.
It was completely templated? As if written on a stone pill?
Sure, sure. In the present day, it’s not possible. We spend months negotiating that deal as a result of the streamers need these rights, however they’ll give away these rights. They’ll have this difficulty and that difficulty. It’s rather more advanced, and the scholars don’t perceive the weeds, however they do perceive the sort of substance of all of it. They’re much extra attentive when it comes to realizing that there’s tech points on high of tech points on high of economic points and rights points. It’s a broader horizon than it was.
What will occur with AI?
AI to me is in what I’ll name Part 1. Part 1 in our business is in essence value management. That’s the place AI performs probably the most distinguished position proper now. On the one hand, it will get the unions excited as a result of, in principle, there are fewer alternatives, and there’s much less manufacturing than there was in a broader sense. The variety of collection and packages has been declining over the past 4 years, and that’s unlucky, but in addition there’s extra alternative than there was earlier than for an indie producer to have the ability to compete.
And what’s Part 2?
Part 2 will get us right into a extra advanced scenario. My view proper now could be that the one self-discipline that’s actually utilizing AI are the writers and the beneath the road unions try to determine how they will place themselves in order that they will benefit from the associated fee financial savings as an alternative of shedding on the associated fee financial savings. However the administrators and actors are mainly have solved the foremost drawback, which is that AI, in essence, doesn’t depend in opposition to them. You’ve received to be human to be copyrighted, which looks as if one thing that ranges the enjoying discipline a little bit bit for studios and expertise.
Do you suppose that’s precarious, the thought of getting a mandated stage of human path on a undertaking with the intention to copyright it?
Put it to you this manner — if you happen to have been introduced tomorrow with a non-human program, would you go to the theater or would you activate the set to look at it, apart from for curiosity’s sake? And the reply might be no. And this isn’t essentially restricted to the U.S., so I feel there’s a worldwide perception that human H-I as an alternative of AI continues to be below management, and what we attempt to do is enhance it and make it work for us. That’s the instrument argument — that it’s an enhancement, and never one thing to defeat us.
There are a few massive AI copyright instances in litigation proper now. Is there one that you simply suppose goes to be most impactful for leisure?
What I’m hopeful is that within the subsequent two years we have now federal laws that solves the judicial difficulty. We can have a cacophony of selections, all of which relate to how we’re going to let AI progress, and we’ll have completely different views relying upon who the judges are. They may all be in search of solutions, which they’ll discover in their very own souls, as a result of they will go in both path. The answer must be laws at a federal stage, each right here and elsewhere, and we’ll have to succeed in some sort of worldwide compromise on how AI can proceed.
Ken, zeroing in a on a difficulty nearer to house. We’re each Golden State natives. Los Angeles feels prefer it’s in tough form proper now. We’ve by no means seen a lot trash on the streets, we’ve by no means seen such widespread homelessness, encampments and associated points. Do you suppose the leisure business’s struggles are a part of L.A.’s drawback, and possibly a part of the answer?
It’s sure and sure. the reply ultimately is we’d like sturdy management, and I feel that could possibly be within the offing. I don’t wish to get into [L.A. Mayor] Karen Bass’ politics a technique or one other, however whether or not she will likely be stronger in her second time period than her first, or whether or not [Democratic challenger] Nithya [Raman] will likely be a stronger mayor — I feel it’s attainable. And we have to take nonetheless one other take a look at our tax insurance policies. It’s old school to say we’ll throw cash at it and it’ll all get solved, however there must be some clever strategy that may require capital. However it’s completely obligatory, in order that all of us have higher lifestyle.
The rest about authorized developments or plans for the symposium that you simply’d like so as to add?
We’re in a dynamic scenario. I nonetheless have hope that we are able to get extra variety within the business, and that we aren’t going to be run by a machine.
