Writer’s Strike Could Open Door to Conservative Media Companies Like Bentkey

The parent company of Daily Wire, Bentkey Ventures LLC, has launched a new network and app dedicated to children’s entertainment simply titled Bentkey. The new business venture was announced in a press release by Daily Wire just last week.

This move to children’s entertainment is not a shock to anyone as the company announced a commitment to invest over $100 million for more conservative and family-values oriented programming for children just a year ago. Jeremy Boreing, cofounder of Daily Wire, said that the new creation of this child friendly content is in response to the woke agenda of Disney. “Walt Disney loved America. The company he founded seems to think America is systemically racist, and beyond just their content, Disney as a corporation pushes all the worst excesses of the woke Left… It would be impossible to overstate just how big a loss this is for Americans who believe in basic reality. Disney controls the greatest content library ever created,” Boreing stated.

Of course he is referring to the agenda that Disney executives have made painfully clear to the American people. Many people remember the footage floating around the internet of Latoya Raveneau, an executive producer at Disney, saying that the company was very welcoming to her “not-so-secret gay agenda”. And there was also the painfully propagandistic reboot of the Proud Family pushing revisionist history of the 1619 Project that has been condemned by many historians. Most recently, Disney has received backlash for woke comments made by Rachel Zegler about the upcoming live action version of Snow White.

Take a look at all Bentkey has to offer: pic.twitter.com/f23Imva5ZA

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 16, 2023

Much of the content produced by Bentkey consists of scripted children’s shows. This begs the question: Why launch a new content creation platform centered on scripted shows in the middle of a long and contentious writer’s strike? While Bentkey surely had many episodes of its new shows in the can before launching, the timing still seems odd unless they are not constrained by the actions of the Writer’s Guild of America.

As it appears, neither Daily Wire nor its parent company Bentkey Ventures, LLC is listed as a signatory of the Writer’s Guild of America. A signatory is any company wishing to employ a member of the WGA. The Guild themselves define the role on their website saying, “A signatory company is an employer that has signed a collective bargaining agreement with WGA. Any company intending to employ a Guild member, or option or purchase literary material from a Guild member, must become signatory to the Guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement.”

One of Bentkey’s lead writers is Eric Branscum, who has had his hand in many other children’s shows such as, most notably for the more conservative audience, Veggie Tales. Branscum has written 12 episodes of Chip Chilla and 3 episodes of A Wonderful Day with Mabel Maclay, two of the new shows offered on the Bentkey app.

According to the WGA, Branscum is a listed member of the Guild. However, the most recent projects they have listed for him come from 2016. It is entirely possible that Branscum’s membership in the Guild has lapsed since his writing credits extend well beyond 2016 according to his IMDb page. Furthermore, according to the strike rules of the WGA, “WGA Members may not write for any non-union writing projects or non-signatory foreign producers.” This would mean that if Branscum is a member of WGA, he would not be allowed to write for a non-signatory company like Daily Wire or Bentkey.

As the writer’s strike continues, it is clear that unions like the Guild have a chokehold on its members. Writers who are current members are going on seven months of hardly being able to work in their profession, and as the holiday season approaches, this is clearly putting a financial strain on many families in southern California.

On the other hand, with much of the more progressive and woke companies and content creators of Hollywood stuck in limbo as the strike progresses, more conservative voices are allowed to step forward and put out content. The Writers Guild of America cannot silence or suppress content from companies that have not signed over their corporation’s lifeline to their whims. Bentkey is taking advantage of the void by producing age appropriate content for children that will hopefully combat the propaganda Disney has been trying to push.