for going back on its promise that the merger that created the giant media conglomerate last year would create more opportunities for content creators.
“WarnerMedia and Discovery promised that their merger would allow the new company to invest in more original content and create more opportunity for underrepresented storytellers,” the guild said in a statement today. “Less than one year after the merger’s close, Warner Bros. Discovery has laid off hundreds of workers and canceled, pulled, or written off $2 billion in content, spotlighting the predictable harms of consolidation.
“Warner-Discovery is the latest disastrous merger to demonstrate the harms of consolidation, and particularly the threat to diversity when gatekeepers combine to increase their power,” Laura Blum-Smith, the guild’s director of research and public policy, said in a statement. “Almost immediately after closing, Warner Bros. Discovery broke the hollow promises it had made of merger benefits.
Warner Bros. Discovery is one of the major companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers that will be bargaining with the WGA for a new film and TV contract later this year. No dates have been set yet for those talks. The guild’s current contract expires May 1, and though a strike is by no means certain, it’s on the top of many industry observers’ and guild members’ minds.
MichelArouca