The WGA West escalated its fight against the AMPTP in the ongoing writer’s strike by calling on the government to regulate Disney, Netflix, and Amazon for monopolistic practices.
Released on Thursday, the report from the WGA West, titled “The New Gatekeepers: How Disney, Amazon, and Netflix Will Take Over Media,” said that studios have been engaging in “anti-competitive practices” by “abusing their dominance to further disadvantage competitors, raise prices for consumers, and push down wages for the creative workforce.”
“Without intervention, these conglomerates will seize control of the media landscape and the streaming era’s advances for creativity and choice will be lost. These new gatekeepers have amassed market power through mergers and other anti-competitive practices, offering an alarming window into the future of media,” the report said.
WGA West Research & Public Policy Director Laura Blum-Smith said that studios have essentially consolidated the business to a select few companies, which has depressed writers’ wages and created poor working conditions.
“Writers being forced to strike in this climate should come as a surprise to no one,” said Blum-Smith. “We’re transitioning from a period of rapid investment and competition that brought about new and diverse content to a monopolistic model that will concentrate control over entertainment programming in the hands of just a few large and powerful corporations. For writers, that means fewer buyers for their work, employers who exert more leverage in individual deal negotiations, and depressed pay and working conditions.”
On Disney, the report said that the conglomerate had solidified dominance through multiple acquisitions (Marvel Studios, 20th Century Fox, ABC), which therefore allowed it to “reduce film output, shut down competing studios, foreclose independent content from its distribution networks, expand control of the labor market, and force creators to give up financial participation in future licensing revenue,” according to Deadline’s summary of the report.
The WGA further called for a regulation on streaming.
“Streaming video is now the dominant distribution platform for content, but it is largely unregulated, taking the problems of vertical integration and media consolidation to the extreme,” it said. “Streaming’s dominant employers have used their leverage to erode the sustainability of writing work; further consolidation could result in fewer writers able to earn a living and diminished variety in the marketplace of ideas.”
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