Labor

A Merger Threatens Employment for Already Struggling Media Workers

Authors: Miranda Banks & Kate Fortmueller

The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger threatens jobs across a wide range of media sectors in a time when jobs in film and television are already declining. Between 2023 and 2024, the total number of episodes and programming hours released dropped more than one-third. This merger is not just bad for workers financially and creatively; it will also harm a much broader workforce, given the current media industry climate. Data shows it could also negatively impact future generations of workers.

It can be easy to imagine the workers at Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery as flashy C-suite executives in designer suits and Hollywood A-listers. But that is not the reality of most people who work at these companies or even where in the country they work. Los Angeles might still be the cultural center, but workers who depend on paychecks from either Paramount or WBD are living in almost every state across our nation. Workers for both Paramount and Warner Bros. include a wide swath of employees, many of them highly skilled and creative workers, across each company’s diversified holdings. These holdings (many from previous mergers and acquisitions) are already some of the most profitable companies in their respective media sectors—film, scripted and unscripted (reality) television, news, sports, and games. Within each sector, there are employees working in development (ideation and revision, connecting creative workers with financing), production, and distribution (acquisition of projects made in-house as well as by other studios and licensing them to theaters, streamers, networks, marketing, etc.). Employees who would be negatively impacted include those working in business offices, in production, and in distribution. The impact of these mergers will be felt in roles where redundancies exist: front-office executives and office employees; film production and distribution workers; scripted and unscripted television production and distribution workers; and operations employees on studio lots and in corporate offices. Employment in video games is critical as well, as discussed in Video Games.

The scope of impact will be felt widely, not just by media workers, but also by thousands of independent businesses that rely on a robust media economy (e.g., prop houses, equipment rental houses, etc.) as well as those that are less directly involved in its basic operations (e.g., restaurants, dry cleaners, etc.). Crucially, these specific effects will be experienced across Los Angeles County and surrounding areas (not just near the studios) and in other states around the U.S. where Warner Bros. has developed operations and where Paramount and Warner Bros. produce films and television shows. Below, we identify three ways that the proposed merger will diminish opportunities for work. 

Consolidation Will Reduce the Number of Buyers for Projects

Paramount and Warner Bros. are both film studios (involved in physical production) and film distributors (which license and market completed films and shows). In both capacities, they are involved in buying projects. 

Suppliers (producers, directors, and writers) are already facing an ever-shrinking number of buyers. A merger will reduce it further, lowering competition in the marketplace and thereby decreasing suppliers’ opportunities for both financing and compensation. A loss in competition has been documented with past mergers. As one media analyst explained in the lead-up to the Disney-Fox merger, “Having two large studios under one umbrella, they want to make sure the slate is optimized so that they don’t end up competing with themselves.”

Corporate consolidation also threatens the smaller divisions within these conglomerates that provide opportunities for a more diverse pool of creators and offer audiences a wider range of stories. When Disney acquired Fox, the company shuttered an entire division, Fox 2000, a specialty production company within Fox that made independent films focused on stories about underrepresented groups. Without Fox 2000, there were fewer opportunities for diverse creators, such as George Tillman Jr. who previously made his directorial debut with Fox 2000’s Soul Food, and fewer avenues for a wider range of storytelling, such as Fox 2000’s Academy Award-nominated Hidden Figures. In short, with fewer buyers, there will be a qualitative impact on creative workers from both a creative and financial perspective. This will ultimately limit audience choice.

The Merger Will Eliminate Jobs at Both Companies

This merger will not create opportunities for workers. Rather, it will negatively impact not only current Hollywood workers but also workers across states and professional sectors. This will also hurt the next generation of film and media professionals and workers. 

Historically, mergers lead to layoffs. Media layoffs have affected workers across various sectors (e.g., cable, film) and parts of the country. Warner Bros. has already undergone several merger-induced layoffs. Discovery’s acquisition of Warner Bros. in 2022—which formed Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD)—led to several rounds of layoffs in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, longtime Atlanta, GA-based leadership and staff at the now-WBD-owned Turner Networks (e.g., Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim, CNN, Cartoon Network) were laid off. Then in 2025, when the merger went through, WBD laid off 10% of its remaining workforce. The 2025 layoffs eliminated a number of Burbank, CA-based film workers across multiple divisions, including marketing, distribution, production, strategy, operations, and theater ventures. These workers, who just survived years of  WBD layoffs, will now face greater uncertainty under David Ellison, who has already cut jobs to save money. This merger would occur at a time when workers at Warner Brothers are still reeling from excessive cost-cutting and job losses resulting from the company’s 2022 merger with Discovery. 

Paramount has already begun laying off its workers after its Skydance acquisition. In 2025, Paramount laid off 2,000 workers. This first round of layoffs was in the legacy television sector, where workers in marketing, communications, and programming lost their jobs. The future Paramount-WBD merger will likely have an even more dramatic impact on media workers, as Paramount attempts to save $6 billion over just two years after overspending to outbid Netflix for WBD. This means that as Paramount positions itself to take over WBD, it will be looking at significantly more layoffs, which some analysts have estimated will be up to 6,000 workers.

The loss of buyers (discussed above) will also mean the loss of many of the studio creative jobs. Consolidation of studios will lead to reductions in the number of people working in development, acquiring new projects, making acquisitions, buying finished projects to distribute, and designing the marketing campaigns that help drive audiences to theaters. 

The Decline in Physical Production Jobs Will Intensify 

The physical production of films and television series requires many people. Each creative leader (director, director of photography, art director, etc.) is surrounded by a crew of workers who help them plan and execute their job. Since a single production rarely employs a crew for an entire year, production workers string together a year’s worth of employment by working on multiple projects (Banks and Fortmueller 149-155). Thus, physical production work is not annual but project-based, calculated in terms of workdays. Whether production workers can make a living by working enough days depends on the size of a studio’s film slate and the number of other projects made each year.

Between 2022 and 2025, the number of features and series shot in Los Angeles and Atlanta has sharply declined. In 2022, there were 171 features and series in Los Angeles compared with 83 shoots in 2025. Similarly, Atlanta production has declined from 83 projects to 45 projects during the same period. New York’s production numbers dropped 37% from 78 projects in 2022, but have since remained steady, hovering between 50 and 54 projects in 2023, 2024, and 2025. This decline is consistent with data on studio film slates, which have been in steady decline for twenty years20.

Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. would continue this trend of declining slates and projects. Currently, both Paramount and Warner Bros. have been on a steady trajectory toward a dramatically-shrinking film slate. All of the major film studios — Paramount, WBD, Sony, Universal, and Disney — have been making fewer films each year over the past twenty years. David Ellison has claimed that Paramount will release 30 films a year, but the economics of the deal make this claim infeasible. Recent trends in the film business and established practices in theatrical distribution suggest the combined studio is likely to release 10-15 films a year total.

The recent picture for television production resembles that of film. The number of television jobs has been declining since 2022, and a merger that eliminates Warner Bros. Television (one of the two largest television producers) will further reduce the number of series produced. The Writers Guild of America (WGA), the union that represents film and television writers, has tracked employment levels and has shown a 37% decline in episodic series production days since 2022. As the WGA has documented, this decline in series has also led to a 15% drop in employment among screenwriters. This decline has harmed everyone from  executive producers to writers to grips (the electrical workers who lights the set). 

The shrinking number of film and television productions has led to an overall decline in workdays in Los Angeles. According to FilmLA, the number of shoot days has declined significantly since 2022, by 19.1% between 2024 and 2025. This number indicates a decline in workdays, but masks the fact that each workday represents paid work for hundreds of film workers who not only make their living on productions but also rely on the accumulation of these workdays to hit the union minimums that help them qualify for their health and pension plans. The loss of workdays represents more than just reduced income; it means lost careers, the ability to care for a family, and the chance to eventually retire.

A Ripple Effect Will Impact Jobs Across Business Sectors in Roughly 37 States

California, and specifically the thirty-mile zone (TMZ) surrounding Los Angeles, has long been the hub of film and television production and distribution. Since the 1990s, global tax incentives have lured production out of California. More recently, US states have tried to attract production work with their own tax incentives. Changes to studio ownership now affect the 37 states with tax incentives that are home to film production. As detailed in Tax Incentives, loss of jobs in the creative industries and ancillary businesses is not just a California issue; it is a national issue affecting a wide range of American workers.

The economic impact of film and television production can be characterized as direct, indirect, and induced. The people and companies who make film and television are clearly and directly affected by whether studios invest in media production. Similarly, the companies that supply production companies with the materials necessary to make media are indirectly affected by investment in media production. These businesses come from different sub-sectors, as identified by the California Legislative Analyst's office: vendors and suppliers (video, sound, lighting), resources (props, rental companies, trailers), plus insurance, legal, etc. Outside of Hollywood, this might also include lumber yards that supply materials for sets or dry cleaners that costumers use for costume cleaning. Finally, induced effects describe the broader circle of economic impact, including the coffee shop that crew members might visit on the weekend, or any other business that benefits from a bustling film production in their town.

Every indicator points to the conclusion that the Paramount acquisition of WBD would lead to a decline in the number of film and television productions. As we discuss above, this will hurt thousands of people working in those industries, but it will also inflict general economic harm on workers around the country who experience indirect and induced impact from film and television production. A 2022 Georgia economic impact study estimates that 9,800 workers benefit indirectly and 15,300 workers experience an induced impact due to film production in the state. A reduction of production will harm film and television workers and affect workers on Main Street, U.S.A.

Opportunities for Future Workers Will Decline.

Since the 1980s, industry internships and fellowships have become a viable, reputable, and culturally meaningful pathway for aspirants to enter an industry. If this merger happens, history has shown that worker training programs currently thriving at both Paramount and Warner Bros. will be folded into one another, thereby reducing the number of fellowships and internships available to future workers. Both Paramount and WBD have had longstanding and well-regarded pipeline programs for scripted entertainment (fiction film and television). For example, Warner Bros. ’Access Writers Program was one of the first of its kind and decades later is still considered the gold standard for fellowships. 

As seen in Disney’s acquisition of Fox, mergers negatively impact the sizes of internship and fellowship cohorts. Fox’s Directors Lab and Global Directors Initiative merged directly into Disney’s Directing Program. While Fox did keep the Fox Entertainment Writers Incubator, it only accepts four people per year. Meanwhile, Disney’s cohort size for scripted media never increased with the addition of the acquisition of the Fox internship program. Pre-acquisition, the cohort sizes for scripted directors, based on press releases, were  five (5) in 2016 and six (6) in 2018 (6). Then, post-merger, they were six (6) in 2020, six (6) in 2024, and four (4) in 2025-26. There is a high likelihood that if WBD’s internship and fellowship programs fold into Paramount’s, they will not double in size. Rather, the number of opportunities for aspirants to enter the industry through these venerated programs will lessen. 

Under David Ellison’s Leadership, Working Conditions Will Worsen

Every merger brings a culture change that impacts workers, either positively, negatively, or a little of both. For example, workers at Warner Bros. who have been under a more flexible work model might be forced out of their jobs. When Ellison bought Paramount, he mandated that all employees comply with a 5-day-a-week return-to-office rule. Research has shown that hybrid work from home has increased worker retention without impacting performance, and that workers are just as likely to be promoted as their peers who are in the office five days a week. Any employee unwilling to return would be terminated through a buyout program. If this merger is approved, workers at WBD, which, as of December 2025, has a hybrid work policy, would likely be given an ultimatum: return to the office or be let go. Research shows that return-to-office policies have a disproportionate and decidedly negative impact on female employees and workers with disabilities.

Ellison’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. would not just stifle competition in the entertainment industry but also place more power in the hands of one individual who has curbed the diversity of voices and opinions expressed on air and in the news. When Ellison bought Paramount, he shifted CBS News out of its vaunted non-partisan journalistic tradition into a newsroom designed to appease the political right. He not only put Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right Free Press, at its helm, but tapped Kenneth Weinstein (CEO of the conservative think tank Hudson Institute) as the news ombudsperson. He has also eliminated all corporate DEI initiatives. These shifts to the right and the elimination of offices focused on diversity, equity, or inclusivity have already transformed workplace culture at Paramount. If this merger is approved, workers at Warner Bros., an organization with a long tradition of supporting an inclusive workplace through its Employee Resource Groups and Pipeline programs, would be negatively impacted.