What’s anti-competitive is that the studios also own the channels. If they were just a studio, they’d be taking bids from multiple outlets before even thinking about shelving it. But because they own both the content and the distribution, they don’t want it to be successful on a competitor’s network.
If that were completely true, there would be no syndication at all, but these things come in waves because there are benefits to both sides of the issue. The syndication market was shrinking until recently as companies tried to shore up their IP into the most competitive streaming package, and as that purist model is not proving to be all they hoped it would be, there is a renewed push to syndicate IP to other companies.
It reminds me of the studio system problem where movie theaters were owned by the studios.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.
We are moving backwards, allowing more and more media consolidation and less competition.
There are reasons we had these laws, and it seems everyone has chosen to conveniently forget them. I won’t be surprised when the movie studios argue that actors, directors, and writers should be “on staff” salaried studio employees again instead of free agents.
Agreed more regulation is desperately needed, but things are starting to go the other way as far as syndication goes, and the WGA and SAG wins for residuals will help to reverse the course as well.
How does a 30 million write off do better than selling it for x amount?
