New Johnny’s’s agency: Talent is contracted with agents… Will the “slave termination” of the past be resolved?

On October 2, Johnny’s s held its second press conference in Tokyo, following the one held on September 7, regarding the issue of sexual assault by its founder, Janie Kitagawa. Johnny’s changed its name to “Smile Up” and concentrated on compensation. The company will go out of business after completion of the project.

And President Noriyuki Higashiyama, 57, said,

We will be an agent company, signing individual contracts with the companies of the talents we wish to work with. They will not be tied down to a company, but will be able to decide for themselves where and in what direction they want to work. We will utilize the producing and management functions.

and announced the establishment of a new agent company that will be in charge of talent management and other aspects of the talent. Each talent or group will establish its own office or company, and the new company will sign an agent contract. As for the younger talent, he said, “It will not be in the form of an agent,

“Young talents can belong to the new company instead of being agents,” he added.

On September 13, Johnny’s announced on its website

From now on, all performance fees for advertising appearances and program appearances will be paid to the talents themselves, and we will not receive any remuneration as an entertainment production company.

This was only about two weeks after the announcement.

The question is, how will the remuneration be allocated if the contract becomes an agent contract? The previous contracts were, in a sense, like ‘slave contracts,’ as they were one-sidedly in favor of the agency, so I would like to know the specifics of the contract.

To begin with, with regard to the contents of the announcement made on September 13, some might question whether the management of the company would be viable if it were to not receive its share of the talent’s fees for the next year, but the overwhelming majority of respondents said that there would be no need for such concern. The reason,

The statement says, “The annual membership fee of the fan club is several tens of billions of yen, and the statement says ‘advertisement appearances and program appearances, etc.,’ so it does not include profits from concerts and sales of goods. Compared to other entertainment agencies, program appearances and advertisements do not account for a large percentage of the firm’s total revenue.

Article 2 of the Johnny’s’s contract, published in the September 23, 2011 issue of “Shukan Gendai” (“Weekly Gendai”), states, “Article 2 of the Johnny’s’s contract states.

The talent (B) authorizes A (Johnny’s) to negotiate and consult with third parties for the creative activities of the entertainment industry in the entire solar system, including Japan and the entire world. ……

I am aware that the scope of activities of Johnny’s Talent is not limited to Japan, but I had no idea that it extends to ‘the entire solar system’ including Mars and Venus. …… This may be considered as one of the charms, but the problem is the distribution of the guaranty between the talent and us. The article on remuneration (Article 5) clearly states

Remuneration, etc. obtained from third parties as a result of creative activities in the performing arts, except for those stipulated in the following paragraphs and below, 50% shall be deducted as necessary expenses, and the remaining 50% shall be the income of A (Johnny’s Office), and 50% shall be the income of B (Talent). However, if B is a group, the amount of money shall be divided proportionally among the members of the group.

To put it simply, when a TV station pays a talent a fee for an appearance, the agency first receives half of the fee as expenses, and the other half is split between the talent and the agency. In other words, the fee paid to the talent is a quarter of the fee paid by the TV station. A senior executive of a long-established entertainment company said, “The contents of the agent contract are….

The TV stations usually cover the cost of costumes and make-up for the program appearances, but for talents in a group like Johnny’s, the group has its own costumes, so I think they have to pay for the production of those costumes. These are the costumes they wear during live performances. However, since they do not make them every time they appear on TV, it is not possible to take it as an expense each time.

What could be considered as an expense is that some offices provide dormitories or company housing, and it would probably be the rent for an apartment or the lease for a car to take you to and from the office. If so, 50% of expenses is too much. I think it is common for the office to take 60%, including expenses.

If the talent’s share is 25%, that means 5% per person for a group of five.

It has long been said that entertainment agencies are “black companies” and that talent are forced to sign “slave contracts,” and in the case of comedians, it was once talked about that the agency takes 90% of the money. However, the situation is said to have improved considerably, and if this is true, Johnny’s s office was the blackest of the black,

The office said, “We are aware that these are matters related to the contents of the contracts with our talents and that they are all confidential information, so we will refrain from commenting on them. However, we would appreciate it if you would understand that we are updating the contents of the contracts in line with the times and explaining them to the talent members.

The answer was, “We will continue to explain the details of the contract to all of our talents as the times change.

Johnny’s will be dismantled and the talent will be able to choose whether to sign an agent contract with the new company or an exclusive contract with the new company. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.

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