ICYMI: Lina Khan Looks Inside Our Pandora's Box
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As those of us in SoCal batten down for Hilary, there are still rays of proverbial sun in Hollywood, where a week of seeming progress between the studios and the writers appear to be moving towards a solution. We’d love to see everyone back to work. Fingers crossed!
Don’t miss Richard’s take on how things may get to the finish line:
And for those sick of strike-and-shutdown talk, take a break with a delicious look back at old Hollywood’s summer vacation photos — where a picture never really was as it seemed:
Now back to reality. We interviewed FTC Chair Lina Khan for our Ankler podcast this week, and it’s hard not to see how, even if one chapter may soon close, the Pandora’s box of the entertainment business will remain wide open. It seems our corner of the world has caught the eye of Biden’s legal superstar, who sees trends here that just don’t square with the world of anti-trust and fair competition:
For us as the FTC, what's really notable is just how many analogs and parallels there are between what's happening in this industry and what we see across all sorts of other industries where again, we've seen consolidation, vertical integration, and the rise of dominant middlemen, intermediaries and gatekeepers that sometimes are not always serving the best interests of the customers or the producers that they're connecting.
And what about the fantasy football-style speculation that more, more, more consolidation is coming (think Apple-Disney, Comcast-Warner Bros. Discovery, etc.)? Well, it sounds like Khan isn’t going to exactly roll out the red carpet and shake the moguls’ hands with a hearty congratulations too easily.
Full audio and transcript are in the link below:
Lina Khan Q&A: Hollywood 'Red Flags', 'Doom Loop' & the Future of M&A
Listen now (36 mins) | FTC Chair Lina Khan joined Janice Min and Richard Rushfield for a revealing conversation about the agency’s views on the various crises roiling entertainment...
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