In the book “The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian, a former dean of journalism at UC Berkeley, Bagdikian found that 50 corporations controlled the majority of media business in the U.S. Around 2012, 50 became 6 with Comcast, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.
Today it’s closer to four:
- Disney acquired most of 21st Century Fox in 2019.
- Warner Bros. Discovery happened when AT&T’s WarnerMedia (formerly Time Warner) and Discovery Inc. merged in 2022.
- Paramount Global was reborn when Viacom and CBS merged back into one company in 2019.
- Comcast (NBCUniversal) is a massive vertically integrated giant.
One could point to the fifth being Sony & Tech Giants. While Sony is a major studio, companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple have replaced traditional networks as the “new” gatekeepers.
The reality is that most Americans get their TV from the Big Four.
In February, Paramount ‘won’ the bid to buy the (still failing) WB/D, and Netflix walked away from it on 26 February. As of the writing of this article, the California DA is threatening to deeply investigate to see if this is legal with regards to “Vertical Disclosure” (meaning the new Paramount-WBD-NBCU monster would own both the content (the shows) and the pipes (the cable/internet) and could intentionally throttle competition).
This is Not Good
I cannot stress this enough, folks, this is real bad for queer TV in the US.
Large conglomerates like Paramount answer to shareholders. This makes them inclined towards three big, bad, behaviours:
- Risk Aversion – Sharholders want money, and that often leads to “safe” programming (reboots, sequels, procedurals) rather than taking risks on niche, queer, or intersectional stories.
- Monoculture – When one company owns 10+ networks/streamers, the “editorial voice” can become homogenized. If you find one executive who doesn’t “get” a queer storyline, it may be blocked across multiple platforms.
- The “Cancellation” Effect – Consolidation often leads to “content purges” (like those seen at Max or Disney+ recently) where shows with diverse representation are removed for tax write-offs or to simplify the library.
Even Netflix isn’t immune to this. Go try to find She-Ra on Netflix, I’ll wait.
Our beloved Princess of Power was removed because of licensing. This, so called, Netflix Original was actually owned by DreamWorks (aka Universal aka Comcast). Was this part of the big on WB? Who knows. But we do know that when the big guys stop playing nice, the queer shows are some of the first to lose their homes.
Monocultures are, in general, terrible. We make jokes about the Hapsburg Chin, and TV is inbreeding itself into a disaster. Worse, they’re pretending to pitch to queers! They cast queer icons, people they know we’ll watch, and expect us to stick around. And with all this consolidation, the people doing the reporting are helping spin the story of a show about ‘outsiders’ has to mean it’s about LGBTQ characters.
Boring is the New Back
There’s been an uptick in reboots, restarts, spinoffs, sequels, and franchises lately like:
- Scrubs – Season 10 just dropped, years after the series ended
- Frasier – Canceled ‘revival’ of the original with none of the charm (nor Niles)
- George and Mandy’s First Marriage – This Young Sheldon spinoff of the Big Bang Theory (which had one lesbian in all its time!) was just renewed for season 3
- Star City – It’s a For All Mankind spin-off about the story from the Russian side (not likely to be queer given the time and place)
There are also more procedurals:
- Matlock – Not really a spin-off, but absolutely a procedural with an ongoing plot
- Elsbeth – A spinoff of two queer friendly shows, with queers, but only one gay male regular
- 9-1-1: Nashville – An expansion of the 9-1-1-verse which is fairly queer, I’ll grant you
But what’s coming next?
- Buffy: New Sunnydale – sequel/reboot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer which we love, but also Tara…
- Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair – sequel/revival to Malcolm in the Middle, with Malcom as a dad
- Elle – prequel to the Legally Blonde movies, and I honestly can’t figure out why
- Baywatch – revival of Baywatch
- White Collar – revival with Matt Bomer (who is gay, but his character was not)
- Dexter: Resurrection – yet another damn resurrection of the serial killer Dexter
Do you see the trend?
The Proof of the Boring is In the Watching
You may have heard that the new Buffy will focus on queers. That may not be the case, as the only citation I could find was the article saying the show will prominently focus on LGBTQ characters. What Sarah Michelle Geller said was “The whole point of an antihero is to be a hero for the people who don’t fit in the box… That’s who I want to tell stories for: the person that really looks to these stories to feel a connection.” Outside of Willow, the Scooby Gang is pretty hetero and while Buffy is bisexual in the comics, but we don’t know if that will materialize in the show, or if the new Slayer will be queer.
Gellar’s ‘outsider’ rhetoric is a safe corporate umbrella. It lets the network claim the ‘Buffy’ legacy of subversion while keeping the actual 2026 leads in a state of ‘Schrödinger’s Queer.’ The comment is inclusive enough for the press release, but vague enough for the shareholders. We see what we want to see (queer) and they see what they want to see (a blunted edge).
Backgrounds and Baiting
Elle is likely to have some gay neighbours (someone being gay was a plot point in the movie), and Scrubs is very much about a bro-mance between two straight men. Even if you go look at 9-1-1: Nashville, the “hook” for the new crossover (airing next week, March 5) is a “Buck and Eddie bonding trip” where the characters from 9-1-1 regular come on down to Nashville. Smells like bro-mance to me.
Malcom is interesting. There was a “sixth child” revealed at the end of the original series (I know, I forgot too!) and Kelly is played by a non-binary actor (Vaughan Murrae). That may mean Kelly is non-binary, which would be actually in-universe funny because Hal and Lois didn’t want another son. That could lead to some interesting plots, but the reality here is the star is Malcom as a dad.
While there are queers here and there, did you spot any shows that were actively focused on queer lives as the foundation?Remember when 50 companies controlled what you watched? Now, it’s closer to four. In this week’s commentary, we look at the “Schrödinger’s Queer” marketing of the new Buffy series and the rise of digital redlining. If self-representation is only available on niche, paid apps, do our stories effectively even exist anymore?
These are all reskins for a retro-hetero audience.
Where Do We Find Ourselves?
It’s a step back to indie media, I suspect. We’re going to see more small networks (Revry, maybe DropoutTV) as the source of actual representative media. While Dropout just passed 1 million subscribers and started dipping their toes into scripted content, it’s still incredibly niche. Their success was found in treating its diverse cast like people rather than demographic data points.
This creates a new issue. While indie media is thriving creatively, this shift creates a “Diversity Paywall.” When 90% of the “free” or “standard” airwaves (the Big Four) are filled with heteronormative reboots, queer stories become a premium product. If you want to see yourself, you have to pay the “Visibility Tax”—an extra $6 to $10 a month for a niche app. In a struggling economy, representation shouldn’t be a line item in a budget that many can’t afford.
The Digital Redlining of the Youth
This isn’t just about money, though in the waves of layoffs that matters too. No, this is really about discoverability.
The whole reason we started this site was to be able to find representation, and now it’s even harder than it was a decade ago!
We are currently seeing a global wave of “Social Media Protection” laws and age-verification mandates (like those recently passed in Australia and being mirrored in the U.S.). While pitched as “safety,” these laws often use biometric or ID-gating that disproportionately flags LGBTQ+ content as “sensitive” or “adult.” We’ve already been prevented from using Google Ads because our content is provocative.
For a queer kid in a non-affirming household, the “Big Four” networks used to be a window to the world. Now the queer content is purged for tax write-offs, the indies are behind paywalls, and social media is being gated by people who think queers are dangerous for the youths.
Finding self-representation is getting harder, not easier. These mergers are building a closed loop of recycled, safe content that serves the shareholders while leaving the most vulnerable viewers in the dark. If the only way to see a queer story is to seek out a niche app that your parents might monitor or block, then for millions of people, those stories effectively don’t exist.
In short, these mergers won’t help anyone except the billionaires behind the curtain.
Support Queer Content
So, support the indies if you can, but keep the giants’ feet to the fire. We shouldn’t have to choose between a ‘Hapsburg Chin’ reboot and total invisibility.
About Mika A. Epstein
