When I first read Jon Voight’s plan to rescue Hollywood, I’ll admit that I felt some shock. Not because he’s stumping for pie-in-the-sky tax incentives for domestic production—everyone in town wants that. Nor because he’s calling for tariffs, which might be ludicrous, but nevertheless rest comfortably beside Diet Coke and gauche interior design on Donald Trump’s shortlist of enduring passions. No, what stopped me was Voight’s call to revive the long-buried “fin-syn” rules. For those not fluent in 1970s broadcast regulation, the “Financial interest and Syndication Rules” once barred CBS, NBC, and ABC from owning programs they aired—a modest attempt to rein in their then-monopolistic power. These restrictions were dropped once pay TV and home video took the stage—and once Rupert Murdoch and his then-burgeoning Fox network made a compelling enough argument that deregulation was the future. But not only does Voight want to revive fin-syn, he wants to expand it. The plan, co-authored by his manager, Steven Paul, makes the case that streamers such as Netflix and Max should be forced to share ownership of content with independent producers, allow secondary licensing after exclusivity windows expire, and split profits on sequels and remakes. It’s a radical shake-up, to put it mildly. Had Kamala Harris won in 2024, I’d have bet the mortgage on the talent community making this exact play. The ghosts of backend participation still haunt agency hallways and dusty Ferrari dealerships. Labor unions perpetually bemoan vertical integration. When Amazon acquired MGM, the WGA practically begged the F.T.C. to remember what fin-syn once meant for creative leverage. The twist, of course, is that it’s now a conservative whispering in Trump’s ear about reviving a regulatory relic—and in a Republican administration that claims to loathe bureaucracy. That may explain why some in Hollywood are scoffing at Voight’s plan, shrugging it off with the excuse that streaming regulation would require an act of Congress. And let’s be honest: Who’s betting on Congress getting anything done? But the more I ask around, the more plausible this all seems. Tariffs are abstract; fin-syn has bite. Even Makan Delrahim, the D.O.J.’s antitrust chief during Trump’s first term, surprised me with his openness to the idea. “One way to do it is to provide preferential tax treatment,” he told me, “for productions that follow some prescriptive, pro-producer formula. Of course, the administration could issue an executive order as well—directing the F.C.C., the Department of Commerce, and even the Library of Congress to examine how to implement.” I asked if the Library of Congress was even within Trump’s jurisdiction. “Has that ever stopped President Trump? No law says he can't.” Delrahim replied. Trump fired the Librarian of Congress later that afternoon.

Why would Trump get behind an inside-baseball scheme like fin-syn? It’s hard to picture him losing sleep over Shonda Rhimes’ backend, or worrying about Disney showrunners getting their fair cut. Hollywood, after all, is a town he famously sees as enemy territory, not one worth championing. Some say the president could be flattered into giving Hollywood what it wants—call something the “Trump Production Credit,” slap his name on the end credits of the next Star Wars movie, and voilà. (On Monday, the MPA and the writers, actors, and directors guilds signed a letter, alongside Voight et al., petitioning the president for tax breaks.) But I suspect the real driver for Trump is grievance, not glory. His endorsement of movie tariffs likely had less to do with rescuing the industry than punishing foreign governments for poaching American production. Viewed through that lens, fin-syn’s appeal may lie in its punitive potential. It tracks historically, too. The original fin-syn rules were established under Nixon, another president fueled by animus toward the media. Back then, the White House was obsessed with disciplining the “liberal press,” and the F.C.C. was practically a flaming sword of retribution. Nixon’s people even flirted with revoking station licenses if coverage skewed unfavorably. The fin-syn rules arrived alongside other efforts, like the Prime Time Access Rule, which required networks to cede a nightly hour in the biggest markets—supposedly to give local stations and independent producers a fighting chance, but conveniently limiting the influence of the Big Three. It’s not hard to imagine Trump, a Nixon admirer with a far looser devotion to norms, seeing a similar appeal. Picture someone like Sylvester Stallone—one of Trump’s “Hollywood ambassadors,” alongside Voight and Mel Gibson, with a noted history of fighting studios in court—explaining that the streamers have amassed too much power, and need to be cracked open for outsiders. And if not Sly, then perhaps Ari Emanuel? The Endeavor boss has a foot in Trumpworld, and if anyone could deliver a pro-fin-syn message with just the right blend of populism and business savvy, it’s him. The question is whether Hollywood’s guilds will march behind Voight. Would SAG-AFTRA, or the WGA, be willing to push past the political discomfort and engage with a Republican president who, however erratically, seems willing to challenge Big Tech? It’s hard to picture their leaders doing the Teamsters routine—backslapping with Trump and tailoring their rhetoric to match. (Catch Sean O’Brien’s love letter last week?) But there’s room for reflection. After all, it was Jimmy Carter who began the rollback against fin-syn—and Bill Clinton who finished the job. Back when vertical integration picked up speed under Obama (see Comcast-NBCU) and Biden (Amazon-MGM), the guilds’ appeals fell on deaf ears.

If Trump opens the fin-syn Pandora’s box, it will be fascinating to watch who resists. Back in the 1990s, when Fox maneuvered in ways that ultimately doomed the fin-syn regime, the loudest outcry came from the Motion Picture Association. The MPA warned that repealing the rules would lead to TV network “blackmail,” with movie producers, in the words of the late Jack Valenti, forced to “do [the networks] bidding.” These days, it’s hard to imagine the MPA throwing its weight behind any revival of the old rules. Since fin-syn was tossed on the regulatory scrap heap, studios like Paramount and Universal have been combined with broadcast networks; CBS and ABC elbowed their way into the lucrative syndication game (see my recent piece on Jeopardy!); and the industry underwent a wave of integration that would have once seemed unimaginable. (I reached out to the MPA for comment. No response.) If Trump picks up Voight’s banner, the biggest pushback would most likely come from Netflix, which has built its empire on owning many of the shows and movies it distributes globally. And while Netflix has never had the lobbying muscle of the legacy studios, the streamer has spent the past few years bolstering its influence—joining the MPA in 2019, backing the Streaming Innovation Alliance in 2023, and, just last month, hiring seasoned trade attorney Clete Willems as its chief global affairs officer. At a recent Semafor summit in Washington, co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos nodded toward what he said were Netflix’s massive contributions to the U.S. economy—$125 billion between 2020 and 2024, he said. The company is on track to nearly double its usual lobbying spend this year. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea of reviving fin-syn picks up momentum. It would create uncertainty, instability, and elite hand-wringing in the entertainment sector—all things this White House might not mind at all. As one veteran put it to me, there’s support in principle, but not a lot of faith in the execution. Ken Basin, a seasoned attorney who’s held posts at Paramount and Amazon and wrote The Business of Television, put it best: “Just gotta hope the good from it is substantial enough, and comes fast enough, to outweigh the inherent harm done by chaos.”

Thanks, Eriq. See everyone on Thursday. Matt