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In a rare team-up of big Hollywood talent agencies, CAA, UTA and WME have joined forces as founding members of the American Entertainment Alliance — which among other things wants U.S. legislation to force streaming
providers like Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and Disney+ to spend at least 50% of their budgets on independent productions.
Alongside the big three agencies, the other founding members of the coalition include Anonymous Content, Jason Blum’s Blumhouse, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, Jeff Sagansky, Legendary Entertainment, MRC, North Road, Producers United, Propagate Content and Ziffren Brittenham. The AEA was announced in a New York Times story Thursday.
“As film and television increasingly consolidate, we need a regulatory framework that puts creators first, protects industry workers and preserves competition,” Jay Sures, UTA’s vice chairman and board member, said in a statement.
On its newly launched website, the American Entertainment Alliance says, “Ending market consolidation in entertainment benefits all Americans — from below-the-line crew members to writers and actors to the viewers at home.” The coalition says U.S. entertainment jobs are “at risk of collapse due to an imbalance of power in the U.S. Film and Television industry.”
The launch of the coalition comes one week after David Ellison’s Paramount closed the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, in a $111 billion megamerger consolidating the movie and TV businesses of two of the industry’s biggest players.
AEA “is a coalition of independent production companies, talent agencies and entertainment leaders that is focused on strengthening competition, expanding opportunities for indie producers and creators, and supporting film and TV production in the U.S.,” the group said in a statement. “The alliance addresses a fundamental restructuring of the entertainment business. Studio consolidation and streaming have dramatically narrowed the market for independent content, disrupting the economics of film and TV.”
In addition to a law requiring streaming providers to allocate half their content budgets to content from U.S. independent studios or producers, the American Entertainment Alliance wants to see licensing and syndication rights for TV shows and movies to revert to the production company (or the outside studio behind the project) after a few years.
The AEA also wants to “Require transparency in the algorithms that determine what audiences discover, to prohibit platform self-preferencing.”
In a statement responding to the AEA announcement, the Streaming Innovation Alliance — whose members include Netflix, Disney, NBCU’s Peacock, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount (now merged as Skydance) and TelevisaUnivision — criticized the call for “blunt government mandates” governing the greenlighting process.
“American audiences in the streaming era have more access to a wider variety of films and shows than at any time in history. Viewers decide when, where, and how to watch at different prices (including free ad-based options) that make sense for their families,” the Streaming Innovation Alliance said. “That’s why more than 70% of Americans view streaming favorably (with even higher support among younger consumers and in communities of color) and nearly 75% think streaming services should be regulated the same or less than they are today”
The Streaming Innovation Alliance added: “Adding blunt government mandates into the greenlighting process will only dampen production and discourage creative risk-taking — winding back the clock on decades of streaming-powered progress.”
The American Entertainment Alliance blames the current state of industry consolidation on the end of the FCC’s Financial Interest & Syndication Rules more than 30 years ago.
In 1970, the FCC implemented the Financial Interest and Syndication (aka Fin-Syn) rules, which barred the three big broadcasters at the time (ABC, CBS and NBC) from owning the programs they aired or controlling their syndication. Under those rules, independent producers had guaranteed access to broadcast distribution and could retain their syndication rights. The FCC ended the Fin-Syn rules in 1993.
“When those rules were repealed, consolidation followed,” the AEA says.
