Daily Inspiration Quote by Scott Bakula

Bakula is talking like a working actor who has watched the business swallow the art, one merger at a time. His target is vertical integration: when the same corporation owns the studio that makes the show, the network that airs it, and often the platforms that monetize it afterward. On paper, it looks efficient. In practice, it can turn a creative ecosystem into a closed loop that rewards safety, internal favoritism, and brand management over risk.

The phrase "own a studio and the network" isn’t abstract policy talk; it’s a diagnosis of who gets to say yes. When development, greenlighting, scheduling, marketing, and renewal all answer to the same parent company, the gatekeepers stop being competing incentives and start being one incentive: protect the portfolio. That shifts power away from creators and independent producers and toward corporate alignment. A show doesn’t just need to be good; it needs to fit the company’s strategy this quarter.

"It hurts the creativity" is less romantic than it sounds. Creativity here means bargaining leverage and genuine choice. If you’re pitching into a vertically integrated system, you’re not entering a marketplace; you’re auditioning for a house style. The "level playing field" line is Bakula’s quiet labor argument: when the buyer and seller are essentially the same entity, outsiders lose access, prices distort, and the talent’s ability to shop ideas around collapses. Coming from an actor who’s lived through broadcast’s old network-studio separations and the current conglomerate era, it’s a warning: fewer independent centers of power means fewer weird, risky shows - and fewer ways to get them made.