John Landgraf, the CEO of 21st Century Fox-owned cable network FX and FX Productions, which produces hits ranging from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to The Americans, tells Axios he's worried that media consolidation with other industries (tech, telecom, etc.) could lead to less quality storytelling.
"If Fox and Disney don’t merge, I think existing TV brands have a pretty uncertain future... There's a possibility that in the aftermath of a merger between Disney and Fox that (the combined company) will be the only free-standing company started by a storyteller — Walt Disney— that's large enough to be at scale to compete. Every other company will be owned by a phone company or cable company or internet platform... There’s a special status that storytellers hold inside these creative companies. We have decades or sometimes upwards of 100 years of experience nurturing stories and I worry about the future of fictional storytelling, to be honest, in an environment where it’s farther down the scale of priorities. I’m not saying it’s a non-priority, it’s just not the number one priority to a company like Google or Facebook and I worry about that."