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this is fresh air I'm Tanya Mos. On the cover of the May issue of Harper's magazine is a provocative image.

A black and white clapperboard, the kind we see in movies during the filming of a scene where a director yells cut, with the words,

the end of Hollywood as we know it.

Cover story writer Daniel Besner makes the argument that seven months after the strike that essentially shut down

Hollywood, the industry is now facing an existential threat like never before.

And television and film writers, Besner says, are the ones losing out.

And there is no one reason why.

The merging of big studios, the continued disruption of streaming services,

and the lack of regulation have all created an environment that is displaced workers with top talent making more than ever before and the nuts and bolts workers losing out dramatically, writes Besner.

One of the biggest disruptors, the merging of big studios, continues to impact

the industry. Just this week we learned news that three separate entities are in talks to acquire

Paramount, one of Hollywood's biggest studios which experts

say will cause even more disruption. Daniel Bessner joins us to talk about what

this all means for workers and for us, the consumer. He's an associate professor at the

University of Washington's Henry M Jackson School of International Studies.

His work is focused on US foreign relations, the history and theory of liberalism, and most recently the history and practice of the entertainment industry. He's the author of Democracy and Exile, Hans Spear and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, and the

co-editor of several historical books on domestic histories and foreign relations.

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