[Fmpro] Still here

[Sean Goble]

Hi All,

I haven't bailed completely, I just needed to pull back a bit.  I'm still 
available if you need me.  Thanks for the appreciation.

Josh:
You don't necessarily need  to notify us of all of your performances. 
Foreign societies (depending on the society of course) will normally do 
surveys or other data collection to figure out what has been broadcast in 
their territory.  So, as you've noted, you receive foreign money without 
reporting.  However, things don't always work out that cleanly.  For 
whatever reason, be it the show received a name change (translation etc) 
or it just didn't get caught, broadcasts slide through the cracks.  As you 
also said, it's hard to keep track of everything and so hopefully the 
stuff you couldn't follow gets caught.  However, it's a good idea to 
follow the shows if possible and compare them to your SOCAN statement, 
making sure you're getting paid by the PROs in the territories you know 
there are performances.  Remember that we pay three quarters behind when 
comparing and that foreign normally only pays once or twice a year.  But 
if you don't receive money for performances you know took place, contact 
SOCAN and have this info handy:

Title of the Series/Film
Episode Title
Cue Sheet # (can be found in the secure section of our website)
Country/Territory
Release Date (Year)
Station or Festival it was performed 
Air Date

What then happens is we put in a claim with the foreign society and it 
goes from there.  We can also function proactively, sending out 
performance dates that have yet to happen, but these notifications often 
get ignored (it seems that a lot of PROs prefer to be reactive) and so I 
recommend you wait until after you should have been paid.  But the most 
important step of this is to make sure that SOCAN has up-to-date cuesheets 
for the show and all your works are registered.  We can't collect on what 
we don't know exists.

 As a publisher, unless you have a subpublisher to back it up, or someone 
actively collecting for you in that foreign territory, I would recommend 
you stay with one PRO ... then you have someone to work for you trying to 
get a claim instead of you having to actually make the phone calls 
yourself.  This is, after all, an industry of relationships.  I, 
personally, think accuracy is debatable as if a PRO catches a performance 
they're going to process, regardless of home country and anything they 
can't ID, they send out "Uni Lists" to all the other societies to attempt 
to identify where the money should go.  At least that's how it works here. 
 (Gotta keep slipping in that disclaimer.)  I know there are people who 
will disagree with me on that point, but as Mark has pointed out, there 
are advantages to using SOCAN to collect in the States.

Cheers,
-Sean