Fight Against Media Consolidation: Share Your Story Dashboard Dashboard

If your project has been cut by a media merger, the WGAW wants to hear from you.

(10/25/2022)

Leading up to the completion of the Discovery and WarnerMedia merger in April of this year, the company publicly announced that the new entity would “be able to invest in more original content,” “increase investment and capabilities in original content and programming,” and “create more opportunities for under-represented [sic] storytellers and independent creators…”¹ These are typical pre-merger corporate promises.

These promises have thus far been proven false: Warner Bros. Discovery has cancelled a wide swath of scripted programming representing hundreds of entertainment industry jobs, pulled more than a dozen series and features from circulation on HBO Max, made plans to combine HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming service, shut down CNN+, and has begun to initiate what are expected to be massive internal layoffs in service of the expected $3 billion in “cost savings.”²

These massive harms to writers and other industry workers, as well as consumers, are shocking in scope and rapidity, but they are the predictable outcome of a permissive antitrust system that has allowed corporation after corporation to buy its competition. BIPOC creators, who are already underrepresented in our industry, have faced some of the worst outcomes of this merger.³ Films and television shows written and/or starring persons of color have been cut, some which had been fully filmed.⁴

As the fallout and backlash of this mega-merger continues, it’s time for writers to get more active. Writers need to tell their stories to elected leaders and regulators in D.C. and Sacramento to demonstrate the real cost of these broken promises.

Opposing media consolidation has been a fundamental plank of the WGAW’s public policy and political work for over a decade, including our extensively documented report on merger failures in the entertainment industry, “Broken Promises: Media Mega-Mergers and the Case for Antitrust Reform.” The WGAW will keep advocating for action by elected officials and regulators, and it can do so by using real-world examples of the harms of media mergers to writers—as well as to the general public.

Have you worked on a production that has been cut due to a media merger? One of the best ways to get involved is to share your story. In April 2022, WGAW Board member Adam Conover gave powerful testimony at an FCC/DOJ Hearing on his own experience of media consolidation. Regulators need to hear about more real-world examples. Contact the WGAW Research Department to let them know how this has affected you and your work. Responses can be made confidential.

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¹https://about.att.com/story/2021/warnermedia_discovery.html
²https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/04/business/media/warner-bros-discovery-earnings.html
³https://deadline.com/2022/07/gordita-chronicles-creator-ep-react-cancellation-hbo-max-1235081519/
⁴https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/batgirl-shelved-at-warner-bros-hbo-max-1235191371/