00:00As you and your peers have written this letter, what do you hope to achieve with it?
00:05Is the goal to squash the deal, wring out concessions maybe?
00:09Well, the deal is not, first of all, thank you for having me.
00:12And yeah, I think the letter is encouraging action on a state level.
00:17Because just like we saw with this lawsuit that happened with Live Nation and Ticketmaster,
00:22we need to throw sand in those gears.
00:25Otherwise, this is going to not just deeply hurt artists, if this goes through creatives in general,
00:31but the consumer, it's going to hit really hard, just like that thing did with driving up those ticket prices.
00:37So that's why so many of us are actually willing to kind of push against and nibble on the hand
00:42that feeds us,
00:43because we want to be hired by these studios.
00:46And yet we're writing letters to say, don't, don't, don't do this merger, because it's that dire.
00:51Right. And the DOJ, as we mentioned, doesn't appear like it'll fight the merger.
00:54But if you are focusing on states, for instance, the state attorney general in California, for instance,
01:00is perhaps going to be investigating this.
01:02What are the kinds of questions that you and your peers want federal regulators,
01:06policymakers to be asking, to be looking into?
01:10Well, we want them to use all of those antitrust enforcement powers
01:14to allow them to independently investigate and block the mergers,
01:18because it's going to harm residents, it's going to harm local industries.
01:21And that's that's where we have power.
01:25We have power with the state level scrutiny that's needed to account for those specific harms
01:30to local media markets, to employment, to creative economies.
01:33And that's where why we put the letter out.
01:36We let people know about it.
01:37People can put pressure on their attorney generals,
01:40especially in California, New York, other major media markets.
01:44We have them all over America.
01:46So, Kirsten, of course, Paramount has responded to the letter.
01:50And the CEO, David Ellison, in his letter, stressed that there's a commitment that the firm has made
01:55to releasing at least 30 high-quality feature films in theaters annually.
02:00Is this not reassuring at all?
02:03No, because we just know historically that with a merger, the power is going to consolidate.
02:09The industry is going to shrink.
02:11That hits storytellers.
02:13So, yeah, okay, movies, whatever.
02:14But it's like the sneetches from the Dr. Seuss with the stars on their belly.
02:18It's all the same story.
02:19It's all rush hour.
02:20And not only that, but we're dealing with, you know, they're already putting these watchdogs in.
02:25So, that's going to affect news.
02:26It's going to affect free speech.
02:28So, that, to me, saying, oh, we're going to put some new movies, is like a little, like,
02:32look at the shiny object over here while we desecrate America's imagination and storytelling machine.
02:39I feel like that's not really, I'm not into it.
02:43So, we know that there's fewer choices for actors in terms of the kinds of content that's being produced.
02:49I remember the CEO of FX, John Landgraf, famously coined the term peak TV.
02:54That was back in 2015.
02:55And he ended up being, I think, seven years too early.
02:58Because in 2022, we actually saw the number of original scripted TV series peak.
03:03And then after that, it started to go down.
03:05I'm curious to find out what that has looked like on your end.
03:08Because it's not something that just happened.
03:11And with Paramount Skydance buying Warner Brothers Discovery, that just kind of continues this trend going forward.
03:16Yeah.
03:16I mean, how to fix me.
03:17And, you know, I'm on a fancy TV show that's been around for 20 years.
03:21But I live in Los Angeles.
03:23So, a lot of creatives I work with are under that glass ceiling, are hand-to-mouth, four jobs, every
03:28once in a while getting a guest star.
03:31And there's just not work to be had.
03:33Now, I'm a theater person.
03:35And because of this upswing in AI, like, theater is going great.
03:39But the people out there in America don't get to see that.
03:42So, I want there to be more work.
03:45And so far, these consolidation things just seem to limit the scope of not only the content that people get
03:53to see, but also the employment.
03:54So, I love it.
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