Writers Guild: AT&T/DirecTV Must Be Blocked

Writers Guild of America, West, President Christopher Keyser, will tell the Senate antitrust subcommittee on June 24 that the proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger "threatens the progress of our most vital communication platforms and will stifle the creativity, independence and innovation enabled by online video."

The merger will inevitably lead to collusion on price, choice and service, he said, cannot be mitigated by conditions, is not in the public interest, and should be blocked. Keyser said that was coming from a group representing more than 8,000 TV and movie writers.

"The writers whom I represent have experienced two decades of consolidation, which has reduced a once vibrant market of independent producers to one in which seven companies control almost all of television," he said in written testimony for a Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing on the deal.