Written By October/November 2009

even years ago, a train thundering into Minot, North Dakota, at two in the morning derailed and caromed across a frozen ground. Tank cars, herniated by the impact, gushed 240,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia in a toxic cloud that shrouded much of Minot, the state’s fourth-largest town. But when local residents turned on their radios, instead of an emergency broadcast, they heard music. All six commercial radio stations in Minot were owned by media giant Clear Channel, including the station des- ignated for emergency announcements. Each was op- erated by computer, so only one employee was on the job. Authorities tried to override their signals by acti- vating the Emergency Alert System, but it failed. As a result, more than 300 people were injured from inhal- ing the poisonous gas, and one person died. But the music continued to play uninterrupted over Clear Channel’s stations, beamed in from out of state. This could not have happened 15 years ago. No company could legally own and operate more than one AM and FM station in any single market. Today, they can own eight in a single market, and Clear Chan- nel owns 1,200 nationwide. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, guided through Congress by Newt Gin- grich’s Contract for America and signed by Bill Clin- ton, is responsible for that nightmarish breakdown in our Emergency Broadcast System. The deregulation of the 1990s led not only to the Telecommunications Act, but to further media consolidation when the FCC and Congress began to roll back the protections of the financial interest and syndication rules (known as fin syn). These rules had prevented broadcasters from owning all the shows they exhibited, requiring them to air entertainment content from independent producers so consumers could view shows from varying perspec- tives. The intention was to create a marketplace of ideas and stimulate economic competition, the lifeblood of a free market. But as the fin syn rules eroded, so did the percentage of independently produced shows. In the 1992-93 television season, 67 percent of primetime broadcast TV shows were independently produced; in 2007, according to the FCC’s Media Ownership Study, that number shrank to only 18 percent. In 1980, I was a young junior college professor writing plays for regional theater. Then I made my first Hollywood sale. At that time, 29 major corporations in the entertainment media shared $100 billion in an- nual revenue. The opportunities seemed limitless. And young screenwriters, inspired by the groundbreaking American films of the 1970s, were ready to make their mark. A writer with few or no produced credits could pitch an idea to a studio or production company and get paid to write the screenplay. A generous portion of Hollywood’s profits were funneled into such research and development because the competition was fierce. Innovation and originality were at a premium. But a funny thing happened on the way to the millennium. That $100 billion of annual revenue in 1980 ballooned to $400 billion in 2008. Meanwhile, the 29 companies that shared those revenues in 1980 shrunk to only six conglomerates today. News Corp, NBC Universal, Disney ABC, CBS, Sony Television, and Warner Bros. now control more than 80 percent of all writers’ employment. For the 82 percent of us writers who work for these six conglomerates, life has changed. I know the creator of a primetime series who, a few years ago, was told he couldn’t produce an episode because it dramatized the OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2009 WGAW Written By • 39

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