A new organization, dubbed the American Entertainment Alliance, is pushing for legislation to force some of the biggest entertainment companies (including Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Skydance) to make sure that half of their original content budgets are devoted to independent shows and movies, produced in the United States by non-studio entities. This, according to a report from the New York Times.
The AEA represents a rare team-up between several of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, including Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor and the United Talent Agency, along with producers like Jason Blum, Peter Chernin, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.
According to the report, the “group’s supporters believe that if the biggest streamers buy a sizable share of programming from outside their own companies, it will reignite the television marketplace, increase the volume of TV shows made, expand opportunities for work and unleash a creative renaissance. If passed, the legislation could also provide bigger paydays for the top producers who create hit shows.”
In the 1970s and ‘80s, some of the biggest series on television were independently produced and merely aired on networks – such as ““Hill Street Blues,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Seinfeld,” “Roseanne” and “St. Elsewhere,” among many others – thanks in part to government regulation. But those same legislations (the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules or Fin-Syn) were repealed in the 1990s, which led “many entertainment companies started airing and streaming programs from studios they owned, making it harder for independent producers to stay in business.”
Now, with the industry in trouble and production down in the United States, the group is making a concerted effort to lobby bipartisan legislation through Congress. As the Times notes, “Many of these entertainment and streaming companies have large lobbying operations in Washington and are likely to fight any bill. The companies will argue that they already buy plenty of series and movies from outside studios.”
“There are fewer people deciding what gets made and what we all see, what the consumer sees,” CAA chief Bryan Lourd further noted. “This change that we’re putting forth would foster an environment where more things could get financed and therefore there’d be more storytellers, more jobs created. Distribution is not the issue of the future. Who finances content is the issue.”
