Doc Distro Lit Review: Streaming

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Exclusive: Biggest Streaming Companies Join First Official Trade Group

Writer Sara Fischer reports that major streaming companies, including Netflix, Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery's Max, Comcast's Peacock, Disney, and TelevisaUnivision's ViX, have formed the Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA), led by former policymakers, to advocate for industry interests in the face of evolving regulations.
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Filmmaker Magazine Editor’s Letter – Richard Linklater

Filmmaker Magazine's Scott Macaulay reflects on Richard Linklater's statements regarding his worries about the declining significance of cinema in modern culture due to technology and advertising dominance, underscoring the need for perseverance and efforts to improve the industry's future.
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The New Gatekeepers: How Disney, Amazon, and Netflix Will Take Over Media

A detailed report from the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) highlights how three major companies' anticompetitive actions harm consumer prices, writer wages, and media diversity, urging swift antitrust action and policy reforms.
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Time to Break Up Hollywood

Writer Matt Stoller argues that streaming giants and industry consolidation are steering Hollywood toward limited content and unfair working conditions, leading to tense negotiations and solidarity over union strikes.
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Reality Check: The Boom—or Glut—in Streaming Documentaries Has Sparked a Reckoning Among Filmmakers and Their Subjects

New York Magazine Features writer Reeves Wiedeman spoke with more than eighty documentary filmmakers about the state of the industry with the streaming platforms playing a larger role in the production of such films.
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Let’s Make a Deal—Or Not.

Reporting on the presentation of Distribution Advocates' data on film festival sales at the International Documentary Association's 2022 Getting Real Conference, film writer Anthony Kaufman describes the challenges independent documentary filmmakers face finding financing, festival acceptance, exposure, and distribution deals that make sense for them.
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The Lens Reflected: What Stories & Storytellers Get the Green Light in Documentary’s Streaming Age?

A study by the Center for Media and Social Impact (CMSI) exposes a lack of diversity among documentary filmmakers, emphasizing the dominance of white men and revealing disparities in acknowledging racism, particularly in the representation of BIPOC and women of color across major platforms, including streamers, cable, and public television.
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Inside the Documentary Cash Grab

Journalists Mia Galuppo and Katie Kilkenny explore the transformation of the nonfiction space into a lucrative industry with streaming platforms, featuring insights from filmmakers like Alex Gibney and Ken Burns on rising costs, ethical challenges, and the evolving nature of their profession.
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Digital Rocks: How Hollywood Killed Celluloid

Writer Will Tavlin chronicles the transition from celluloid filmmaking and exhibition to digital, highlighting the proposed benefits and the eventual pitfalls—offering a critical exploration of the difficulties in safeguarding cultural records in this digital era.
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Fremantle’s Mandy Chang Warns Against a “Corporate Age” of Documentary as Streamers Fuel Docmaking Boom

Freemantle's global head of documenaries, Mandy Chang, spoke at at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH: DOX), about how streaming platforms stick with true crime, sport, and celebrity-driven stories so that they become mainstream and popular, essentially locking out opportunities for other, perhaps viewed as "challenging," documentaries.
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It’s a New Day: Collective Distribution

New Day Films, a cooperative founded in 1971, empowers more than 100 filmmakers to self-distribute educational films, employing a consensus decision-making model, a "share ladder" system, and adapting to the digital era with New Day Digital.