LATE FEES

Late fees are costs incurred as penalities for not getting talent payments to our radio & TV performers in a timely manner. 

Each union we deal with has its own set of rules pertaining to payment deadlines.

For ACTRA (English radio/TV talent)

Payment must be received no later than 21 calendar days (weekends included) from the last work day on the session contract.
Payment for residual cycles must be received no later than 28 calendar days from the 1^st day of the broadcast cycle.

For UDA (French radio/TV talent)

All payments must be received no later than 20 business days (weekends not included) from the last work day of the session or 1^st day of the broadcast cycle.

For AFofM (musicians for radio and/or TV)

We have 15 business days to make payment for sessions and 20 business days for residuals.

For SAG (U.S. radio/TV talent)

12 business days for session payments, 15 business days for online and radio/TV residuals, and holding fees must be in the hands of the performers on the day they become due.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, we can’t pay the talent in a spot until we have the Completion Report from the producer.

We also need the completed session contracts and music contracts before payments can be made.  When commercials are being shot in far-away places, in other countries or even just out of town locations, there is often a delay in receiving contracts.
If post-production is complicated and involves many edits, it can take time for the producer to recap all of the information in the completion report especially since the producer may be working on multiple projects simultaneously.  Regardless, the clock starts ticking as soon as the performers sign out on the day of their performance.

Paying late fees is never a good thing. Most often they become a “write-off” expense since it’s pretty difficult to justify billing a client for costs that have been incurred because we missed the submission deadlines.