On Thursday, the Writers Guild of America strongly criticized the potential merger of Warner Bros. with any other studio, declaring that such consolidation could spell trouble for writers.
This statement was released just two days after Warner Bros. revealed it was considering various acquisition offers. The most interested party is Paramount, newly acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance. A deal with another content provider would reduce the number of buyers in the marketplace.
According to a statement from the WGA East and West, “The ongoing trend of mergers within the media sector has negatively impacted workers, reduced competition and free expression, and squandered billions that could have been better spent on growth initiatives. Uniting Warner Bros. with Paramount or another major studio or streaming service would be detrimental to writers, consumers, and competition. The WGAW and WGAE are committed to collaborating with regulators to prevent this merger.”
The WGA has historically opposed mergers in the industry. In 2002, it fought against the Dish-DirecTV merger.
The union also sought to thwart the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBCUniversal, expressing concerns that the media landscape was already overly consolidated and that Comcast might leverage its cable distribution to prioritize its own content.
Additionally, the WGA raised issues about “net neutrality” when it opposed the 2016 merger of AT&T and Time Warner.
“When the country needs a broad array of perspectives, stories, and voices, we are entrusting the media realm to corporations whose primary goal is to maximize short-term profits instead of informing, enlightening, or entertaining,” the WGA East stated following the approval of the merger in 2018.
The union also opposed the Disney-Fox merger in 2017 and the Amazon-MGM merger in 2021. They decried the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger in 2022, which reversed the earlier AT&T merger, labeling it a “clear disaster for content creators who have lost jobs and opportunities, and for consumers facing a less diverse content environment.”
The WGA has additionally advocated for stronger antitrust measures. In 2023, the union cautioned that Disney, Netflix, and Amazon are set to become the “new gatekeepers” of the entertainment industry.
