Who's Running the Show?: Negotiating Authority in Post-Fin-Syn Writer-Producer Deals

The lapse of the Federal Communication Commission's Financial Interest and Syndication Rules transformed frameworks of authority and authorship in US television production in new movements toward centralization and vertical integration. This article explores these transformations through an analysis of writer-producer deals—from the repertoire of general deal forms to the specific terms of writer-producers' close employeeship in "overall deals." More broadly, it seizes a problem of the contractual organization of the writer-producer's role within a largely uncharted system of economic and social forces. More narrowly, complicating figures of an auteur showrunner, it traces recent renegotiations in which studios have asserted increasing creative control, economic control, and control over writer-producers' careers.