U.K. government rules out placing levy on U.S. content streamers, Deadline says

The U.K. government has effectively ruled out the notion of placing a levy on U.S. streamers such as Netflix (NFLX) amid a funding crisis for domestic scripted series, Deadline’s Jake Kanter reports. Creative industries minister Chris Bryant told lawmakers that “we haven’t got any plans” to follow the lead of other European countries in imposing a levy on foreign streamers, the author says, noting that “Wolf Hall” director Peter Kosminsky had previously called on such companies to pay 5% of their U.K. subscription revenue to a cultural fund for British content. Last week, the BBC sounded an alarm about funding gaps between it and other big streamers, saying that a number of greenlit series are “stuck in limbo” and unable to enter production, the author notes. Other notable U.S. companies in the streaming space include Disney (DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Comcast (CMCSK) (CMCSA), Paramount (PARAA) (PARA), and Apple (AAPL).