In the 1970s and ’80s, during a golden age of independent television production, series like “Hill Street Blues,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Seinfeld,” “Roseanne” and “St. Elsewhere” made their way to American living rooms. Those shows appeared on CBS, ABC or NBC, but thanks to government regulations, they were owned by companies and studios unconnected to the networks that aired them.
Since those regulations — the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or Fin-Syn — were repealed in the 1990s, many entertainment companies started airing and streaming programs from studios they owned, making it harder for independent producers to stay in business. Now, amid a painful, four-year downturn in the entertainment industry, there is a renewed push to bring back a form of Fin-Syn for the streaming age.
This week, a new organization called the American Entertainment Alliance will begin publicly pushing for legislation to force the biggest entertainment and streaming companies — including Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime Video and Skydance — to allocate half of their original content budgets to shows and movies from independent producers in the United States.
The group’s supporters believe that if the biggest streamers buy a sizable share of programming from outside their own companies, it will reignite the television marketplace, increase the volume of TV shows made, expand opportunities for work and unleash a creative renaissance. If passed, the legislation could also provide bigger paydays for the top producers who create hit shows.
The organization is made up of some of the biggest players in Hollywood, including a rare coalition of rival talent agencies like the Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor and the United Talent Agency. The group also includes dozens of producers, including Jason Blum, Mark Burnett, Peter Chernin, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.
“There are fewer people deciding what gets made and what we all see, what the consumer sees,” said Bryan Lourd, the chief executive of CAA. “This change that we’re putting forth would foster an environment where more things could get financed and therefore there’d be more storytellers, more jobs created. Distribution is not the issue of the future. Who finances content is the issue.”
Or as Mr. Grazer, a producer behind “Apollo 13,” “Arrested Development” and “Friday Night Lights,” put it: “We don’t want the media business to die.”
Getting any bipartisan legislation through Congress is, of course, no easy task. Many of these entertainment and streaming companies have large lobbying operations in Washington and are likely to fight any bill. The companies will argue that they already buy plenty of series and movies from outside studios.
In recent months, Hollywood has turned to Congress and President Trump to help stabilize the entertainment industry. In September, a bill was introduced that would offer federal tax credits to encourage a return of production to the United States. The alliance’s efforts are different from that tax-break initiative, “but they are both necessary in order to fix what’s wrong,” Mr. Lourd said.
Since the Peak TV-era bubble burst, research indicates that the number of dramas, comedies and limited series has declined roughly 40 percent compared with four years ago.
The alliance’s efforts began months ago, and were spearheaded by Chris Silbermann, a CAA managing director whose clients include Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Bridgerton”) and Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”).
“The whole goal here is to get that ecosystem to thrive again,” Mr. Silbermann said.
Dan Limerick, the chief operating officer at WME, said, “To do nothing is not an option.”
Enter Fin-Syn. In the 1960s, regulators started looking skeptically at the television landscape, and were concerned with the concentration of power among the three big networks. (Fox began in 1986.)
The Fin-Syn rules came into effect in the early 1970s and largely prohibited the networks from acquiring ownership stakes from the independently produced series they aired in prime time. Soon, an entire ecosystem of independent producers and studios started to thrive, including MTM Enterprises (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “St. Elsewhere”), Tandem Productions (“All in the Family,” “Good Times”), Lorimar (“Dallas,” “Knots Landing”), Carsey-Werner (“The Cosby Show,” “Roseanne”) and Castle Rock (“Seinfeld”).
The Federal Communications Commission repealed the rules in the 1990s because, in theory, the ascent of cable channels was providing more than enough competition for the networks.
Fast-forward to present day and the industry is confronting an entertainment landscape dominated by a handful of media and tech companies, and much of what they program they either own or refuse to let off their platforms for many years, members of the alliance said.
“Streamers collect the subscription fees and the advertising, and they own the shows,” said Mr. Burnett, the producer behind reality shows like “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” “Isn’t it reasonable for some version of Fin-Syn to return where the creators of the shows have more ownership of those shows?”
In addition to forcing the companies to dedicate half their budgets to content from U.S. independent studios or producers, the alliance wants licensing and syndication rights for a TV show or a movie to revert to the production company or the outside studio after a few years. This would give a producer an opportunity to sell the movie or back seasons of a show elsewhere, and could provide a good payday.
The F.C.C. used to oversee the Fin-Syn rules, but given that the agency has little regulatory control over streaming platforms, the alliance is seeking legislation. Members have been in touch with sponsors of the federal tax credit bill, and are hoping to get a bill introduced next year.
Mr. Blum, who runs Blumhouse (“Get Out” and “The Purge”), a studio long seen as a symbol of success among independent producers, said that “we shouldn’t be this like singular thing — there should be a hundred Blumhouses.”
“I really believe that stifling or pushing independent companies out of business is ultimately bad for everyone,” he continued. “It’s bad for the consumer. It’s really bad for the platforms, too. It’s really hard to get ‘Get Out’ without an independent production company. It’s impossible to get ‘Obsession’ without an independent production company.”
Many producers pointed to the fact that other countries, including Britain, Germany and France, have similar rules.
Mr. Howard, who runs Imagine Entertainment (“A Beautiful Mind,” “Arrested Development”) with Mr. Grazer and Justin Wilkes, said the Fin-Syn rules had been critical for him to get his start in producing. He also said he had been “dying for the Fin-Syn rules to return” for more than two decades.
“Creatives are not at their best when they’re looking over their shoulder wondering if the bosses are going to like it,” Mr. Howard said. “They’re at their best when they’re incentivized, they have some agency and a reason to fight for ideas that they believe in. The marketplace then makes a determination, and that creative competition leads to real growth.”
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