Writers Guild of America admit Attorneys General Left Them Out to Dry in Paramount Appeasement
Today, a dozen attorneys general settled with Paramount regarding the company’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The attorneys general received little in return but did try to make it look like they actually got something in return. In July, twelves states and the Writers Guild of America filed antitrust lawsuits in an attempt to stop the merger. The AGs have caved, along with numerous spineless unions, and now the WGA has spoken out in a rather damning statement. We put in bold the big “fuck you” to the AGs involved.
We continue to believe the merger will cause damage to writers and the industry at large. Now that the Attorneys General have settled with Paramount, however, as a nonprofit, the WGA must contend with the reality of forging ahead alone, with no backing from government enforcers, with a complex antitrust lawsuit that would cost millions of dollars to pursue through trial. Consequently, we have also settled our lawsuit with an agreement from Paramount to prohibit writer layoffs at CBS News Broadcast for 5 years, and to pay $17.5 million to our health fund along with our attorneys’ fees in the litigation.
Though we were not successful in blocking the merger, our advocacy brought more attention to the harms that this merger—and others like it—will cause. We will continue to fight the harms of industry consolidation.
As the number of outlets to sell our work to and the corresponding diversity of programming shrinks, we need industry-wide structural separation between streamers and studios in order to promote competition in programming, like the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules once required in broadcast television. We will continue to fight for these goals.
The merger is expected to cost 10s of thousands of jobs as well as negatively impact economies. Congrats attorneys general and Democrats for throwing the WGA under the bus! That’s how you continue to build support!
