Thoughts on the MGM/Amazon Merger

This past week, Amazon announced that it would be purchasing MGM, the latest merger in an increasingly contracting entertainment universe.  While MGM is possibly the most storied studio in Hollywood history, much of its catalog was sold off to Ted Turner in the 1980's, so films like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are currently the property of Warner Brothers, not MGM, but Amazon will still get a plethora of major film brands, ranging from Rocky Balboa to Elle Woods to Hannibal Lecter to, certainly most importantly in terms of sheer dollar numbers, James Bond.  This also is another sign of a changing cinematic landscape, as MGM (and its property United Artists) are the first two of the eight significant studios of Classical Hollywood (MGM, RKO, Universal, Paramount, Columbia, Fox, Warner Brothers, & United Artists) to be owned by a streaming platform, a huge change even in a world where none of these studios is still an independent entity.  I thought this was worth discussing, particularly for a blog that is devoted to film of all eras.

Amazon's purchase, while it doesn't have a lot of the pre-1986 titles in the MGM library, does have an enormous number of major American films.  In addition to the titles I listed above, they also own 12 Angry Men, Moonstruck, Thelma & Louise, Raging Bull...a huge plethora of film & television.  This gives a lot of this library the chance to be seen on Amazon Prime if/when the merger were to be finalized.  Amazon Prime is one of the more important streaming platforms, and of the major platforms (Disney+, Hulu, & Netflix being the others), the one that seems the most inclined to celebrating film history.  Amazon, a company that favors quantity over quality as a general rule (it gets its reputation as a place where you can get anything there for a reason), is the streaming platform you could have the most confidence in to put these properties on its site, rather than just relying upon hope that they'll someday put a movie on their platform.

There's also the fascinating conundrum with this conversation about The Apprentice.  The show that starred former President Donald Trump, and brought him mainstream fame in a way that he'd never really had before (you can draw a pretty clear line in Trump's rehabilitation as a "successful" businessman from his multiple high-profile bankruptcies in the 1980's & 90's directly through The Apprentice) is an MGM property.  As a result, if this deal went through, the company (and its head Jeff Bezos) would have access to the show, including (allegedly) its outtakes, which (allegedly) have Trump saying racist & sexist words, including racial slurs, and saying untoward things about his children.  It's not clear what kind of a role Bezos would have in being able to release this.  It's possible Trump or producer Mark Burnett do not have the legal right to release these tapes...though one wonders if Bezos, the world's richest man (on occasion), would give a crap about breaking Trump's NDA considering the attacks the former president has made on Bezos and his paper The Washington Post.

But these are big if's, and I think the larger conversation here isn't over what this merger might mean, and instead focus on what the merger does mean: a continued iconoclasm of classic films, at least in terms of the freedom that American cinephiles once had.  Because the one thing that Amazon doesn't want, or need, at this point, is an investment in more physical media.  The platform only has incentive to grow its Amazon Prime membership base, and that is unlikely to happen if/when this merger happens if they continue to invest in physical media.  Coupled with what appears to be the likely shuttering of Warner Archive discs, physical media has taken an almost gargantuan hit in the past few weeks, and this is a problem for cinephiles who care about intellectual freedom.

Rocky, one of the most important franchises at stake
in an MGM/Amazon merger

It's hard for modern movie-watchers to grasp (it predates even my time), but there used to be a time when film fans weren't able to watch movies whenever they wanted.  Before the mid-1980's, the only way to see a movie was through it being rereleased in theaters or streamed on television.  This was such a big deal that a 1976 airing of the movie Gone with the Wind attracted a 47.7 rating (unthinkable today).  Both of the two-part airing of a movie that at the time was over 35 years old, is still in the Top 10 highest-watched TV broadcasts of all-time, more so than the finale of Cheers or the Beatles playing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The VHS changed this, and for the better.  Movie fans, instead of hoping for a movie like Gone with the Wind to be aired on TV or to play at their local theater, were able to bring home the film & watch it whenever they liked, at their own pace.  Obviously they had to buy this from a corporation, but that was the only transaction.  They were no longer reliant upon a corporate entity to provide them a movie-it was theirs, forever.  This concept maintained with the move to DVD, to BluRay, to 4K.  In the 1990's and early 2000's, a similar opening up of such a scenario happened with the advent of the TV on DVD, where you could purchase an entire series on DVD, and therefore not be at the mercy of reruns or endless blank tape recordings off of your VCR.  This was a momentous moment for the entertainment industry-you could own a movie.

This isn't discussed enough when it comes to physical media, but the move away from DVD libraries & more toward streaming essentially steals this away from viewers.  If a movie is on Amazon Prime, you don't own that movie, you can't really watch it whenever you want.  You still have to pay a monthly fee for the picture, and you are still reliant on Amazon finding it worthwhile to keep said movie on their platform.  The revolving door of series on different platforms means you can never say with confidence if a movie or show is going to stay on that platform, or potentially disappear onto another one (where you'll have to shell out another $15 a month), or worse yet, that it simply won't find a home & you'll be without it forever.  Think of how often you see headlines for Friends and The Office leaving a platform, and fans are bereft.  For those of us who own these series on DVD (like me), we don't have to worry about this.

This switch away from physical media isn't entirely Amazon (or Netflix's or Disney's fault).  Sure, they profit from being able to keep charging you to watch the same show you could just buy for less on DVD in the long run, but the consumer chose this.  All of these platforms had (and still have) physical media outlets that if people invested in them they'd continue-corporations like profit, and if physical media is/was profitable, they'd keep investing in it.  People talk about the convenience of streaming, but I do think it's worth reminding yourself that it comes with a price.  The ease of streaming means you'll never know if your favorite movie or series will disappear.  There's a luddite attitude here, perhaps, in not appreciating streaming, something I will note I subscribe to as I have several streaming memberships myself but (not to get too 1984 here), film/TV fans are taking away one of the few recent instances where they had a concrete step toward them owning a piece of a corporation, where an industry gave them a true piece of freedom that didn't come with a continual cost, and giving it back with streaming.  It's hard not to look at people willingly giving Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, more of their financial freedom not through subscribing to his service, but by helping him close off access to other competitors, without a great deal of skepticism.