Broken Promises details the harms of five recent mergers to consumers and labor.

(1/7/2022)

The WGAW recently released Broken Promises: Media Mega-Mergers and the Case for Antitrust Reform, a report on how media companies continue to get bigger, more profitable, and more powerful, while writers and consumers pay the price. Time and again, our employers have received government approval to buy their competitors by promising lower prices, more choices and better products for consumers, only to deliver fewer choices, higher prices, worse working conditions, and layoffs. With mentions in Politico, and CNN Business, the report is influencing the policy discourse by calling on lawmakers to view media mergers with greater scrutiny and treat claims of consumer benefits with the skepticism they deserve.

Broken Promises provides an analysis of five of the largest media and telecommunications mergers of the past decade: Comcast and NBCUniversal; AT&T and DirecTV; AT&T and Time Warner; Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House; and Disney and Fox. If we contrast the promises these corporations made with the predictable harms that resulted, it’s clear that companies aren’t being held accountable for these outcomes. Despite this, the wave of consolidation continues. In May 2021, AT&T announced its plan to spin off WarnerMedia to reality TV giant Discovery, followed a week later by Amazon’s plan to purchase film and television studio MGM.

Massive consolidation in our industry has left a small number of vertically-integrated players controlling content production and distribution. This results in fewer opportunities for writers to sell our ideas, reduced creative control, and downward pressure on our wages. Despite record profits for media conglomerates, median episodic pay for TV writer-producers, adjusted for inflation, is nearly the same as it was in 1995.

Broken Promises presents a roadmap for remedying failed federal policies that have allowed our employers to accumulate excess power. To see our policy recommendations become reality, we need policymakers in Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice who understand what’s at stake. As we face another critical midterm election, the WGAW Political Action Committee will be working to help elect political leaders who can stop media mega-mergers, reform antitrust policy, and change the future of our industry. Learn more about how you can help build political power by becoming a recurring donor to the WGAW PAC today!