December 7, 2021

Writers Guild of America West Releases New Report Examining the Harms Caused By Media Mergers

Contact: Bob Hopkinson (310) 801-8563
A new report from the Writers Guild of America West shines a light on failed antitrust policy through a review of five mega mergers in the media and telecommunications industry.

“Broken Promises: Media Mega Mergers and the Case for Antitrust Reform”

Los Angeles – A new report from the Writers Guild of America West shines a light on failed antitrust policy through a review of five mega mergers in the media and telecommunications industry—Comcast and NBCUniversal; AT&T and DirecTV; AT&T and Time Warner; Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House; and Disney and Fox.

Company after company, in seeking to buy the competition, has promised benefits but delivered harms. Until structural problems in antitrust law and practice are addressed, these types of media mergers will continue to hurt labor and consumers; the recent Discovery-Warner Media and Amazon-MGM merger announcements make clear the urgency to act.

“Broken Promises” examines the following five mega mergers:

  • ComcastNBCU;
  • AT&TDirecTV;
  • AT&T Time Warner;
  • CharterTime Warner Cable-Bright House Networks;
  • DisneyFox.

“Waves of vertical and horizontal consolidation in the media industry have left fewer and fewer players controlling content production and distribution,” the report states. “As deregulation and antitrust underenforcement replaced limits on content ownership and vertical integration, media conglomerates used their market dominance to undermine competition, control terms in labor markets, and decide what content consumers could see.”

“This report shows that the existing system of merger review is broken,” said Meredith Stiehm, President, Writers Guild of America West. “The Writers Guild of America West has raised the alarm when our employers and the companies that distribute our work justify swallowing each other with promises we know they can’t keep. These mergers have made writers and workers in our industry, as well as consumers, worse off.”

“Mainstream economics stresses that the well-being of society requires fair competition and strict limitations on monopoly mergers,” said David Young, Executive Director, Writers Guild of America West. “It is never too late to bring antitrust enforcement in the media industry back in line with these basic economic standards.”

Read the full report, “Broken Promises.”

The Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) is a labor union representing writers of motion pictures, television, radio, and Internet programming, including news and documentaries. Founded in 1933, the Guild negotiates and administers contracts that protect the creative and economic rights of its members. It is involved in a wide range of programs that advance the interests of writers, and is active in public policy and legislative matters on the local, national, and international levels. For more information on the WGAW, please visit: www.wga.org.