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As a working videographer within Tucson’s film and media ecosystem, I appreciate Senator Steve Farley’s support for creating new local jobs in film production. I wish I shared his optimism about the $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance, but I doubt it will provide much for our struggling film community.

Some of the recent fanfare about the merger’s potential for job creation comes from a report from the California Policy Center, a pro-free-market think tank. Its economic predictions are largely extrapolated from pledges made by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison to Congress that he will increase film production in both studios.

I’d like to take Mr. Ellison at his word, but recent history suggests caution. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 4,000 people lost their jobs when Disney acquired Fox’s assets in 2019. At least 2,000 were laid off when the Ellisons purchased Paramount — and the company plans to cut over $6 billion in expenses after this merger. Even the author of this sycophantic economic report admits some jobs will be lost as a result of this.

But what if I’m wrong, and it does create a slew of new opportunities in film production? Well, we’d be lucky if these jobs remain in the United States at all, let alone Tucson. Every year, more productions are moving overseas, where incentives and low costs can be tough to compete with.

The report acknowledges this, but cites California’s whopping tax incentive program ($750 million a year) as a bulwark against offshoring. California's economy may be able to support internationally competitive tax breaks long-term, but the nationwide picture is grim. According to the Hollywood Reporter, on-location productions declined nationally by 10% from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2026, with New Jersey being the only state to see an increase.

David Ellison and I agree that we need a national film incentive program to be globally competitive. But at this point, one has to ask — is pinning the entire future of American film on a handful of blockbusters from a corporate behemoth the best way to help the artists who make culture and the public who consume it? Perhaps the executive we need to help local film communities is our good old Uncle Sam.

Government investment in artist grants and public media provides financial stability for filmmakers and creates an essential space for innovation. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has produced some of North America’s finest directors and animators, and has long been a pioneer in technological advancement — from handheld camera techniques in the 1960s to new modes of interactive media in recent decades.

If the NFB is a little too much for you, consider an American precedent that could build necessary infrastructure and benefit smaller localities directly. In the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission mandated that cable companies provide public access television stations across the country. These gave communities a voice in media and, as the name suggests, access to broadcast technology. We had a station, Access Tucson, and its programming was vibrant, quirky, and above all, authentically grassroots.

Perhaps a percentage of industry profits could be taxed to create a new generation of community-owned sound stages and production studios, subsidized by the government. Placing media infrastructure under local democratic control, these centers could provide access to cheap services for community organizations, job training, and be rented by commercial film productions to pay expenses and support emerging film industries in places like Tucson.

I’ll leave the nuances of policy to the wonks, but I give these two examples to make a point. Yes, cultural industries are a boon for local business. But culture is also a vital piece of our community’s democratic values and is key to every individual’s relationship with the society they live in. In an age of media oligopoly and artificial intelligence, we shouldn’t have to depend on volatile markets or tycoons like David Ellison to give us the economic agency to make culture. Working-class artists — and the American people at large — should reassert their right to shape it.