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'Big Media' Set to Get Even Bigger
seldolivaw writes: "You might be interested in this Wired article, a fairly good summary of why monolithic media is a bad idea, and exactly how close the US already is. Funny quote: "There are six or seven media conglomerates that rule the world... [b]ut how many companies do you need to provide programming to mass audiences? Six companies should be enough. At least it's not two." America, head for the hills -- I'm safe in the UK, not!"
In Brazil there is no limitation on what can a media conglomerate own. The biggest media companies in Brazil own television, newspapers, radios, weekly magazine, "internet portals", internet service providers, etc. It is very difficult for a community radio to get a license to operate legally (so they usually run as pirate stations), but for the few families that have political power for ages (and who own media brazilian conglomerates) it's very easy to open a new radio station or even tv station. Not only that, but these media companies not only run cable tv and cable broadband, but they usually run these business as a monopoly in many metropolitan areas.
It's common to only have access to the online version of magazine X if you subscribe to the ISP of the same media conglomerate. It's pretty messy, but people don't give a damn. What irritates me is when you see advertising of a new branch of the conglomerate in the other distribution media of the conglomerate, and you think to yourself that it is obvious that they didn't pay for that advertisement.
Oh, and we have our FCC. It's called ANATEL, for Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes (National Telecom Agency), but it is also known as Aqui NAo TEm Lei (There is no law here).
Consolidation of news media is a concern, but not a very critical one. As fast as interesting, successful competitors get bought up, new outfits spring up to take their places as upstart new media. As the formerly fresh lose their chops and glitter and begin to take on the bland aspects of homogenized corporate mind control, smaller and nimbler startups start getting attention, taking marketshare from the older and slower organizations, and growing revenues (advertising _always_ follows circulation/hit numbers).
And the media mix evolves over time, as new channels become popular. To see this, just look at the evolution of news delivery over the last twenty years or so. When I was 12 I had a paper route - about 50 customers at first, after school - then 100+, early morning. In my town that paid me about $1/month per customer, not bad for a kid. Almost _everybody_ took the newspaper. Not every house had a TV, then. We would canvas poorer neighborhoods regularly to sign up folks who'd just moved in, got a regular job, etc. (I once tried to solicit a subscription at a rundown whorehouse, 11 AM on a Saturday morning. The "lady" at the door was sweetly disappointed that I was too young for what they could trade. So was I, as I recall....) Ahem! Where was I - oh yes, media progression...
(I didn't read newspapers or watch TV at college - too busy with drugs, sex, and rock&roll, I guess... Or maybe it was the physics, chemistry, protest marches, philosophy, falling in love, working computer operations, getting dumped, programming, being depressed, changing jobs, recovering, all those things we all do in our early to mid 20s.)
Then everyone got TVs, even the poor people (who usually paid _more_ for them due to time-payment deals) and there were only three major networks, plus an independant station in my town. About this time there was a bitter union strike/lockout at one of the newspapers, which resulted in a busted union and only one newspaper with any mass circulation (a situation that persists to this very day in the tight little Northwest city where I was raised - and I knew it very well - dated a lady Mayor's daughter who lived a couple blocks away (those were many _nice_ summer nights), later narrowly avoided getting assaulted by some local asshole power-broker when his paid-for candidate lost an election, knew the tavern owner (now former) Mayor,and so on). But looking back, it's clear that the media gravity, and the political power structure changed, there. But it wasn't TV that levered the political change. What made the difference was a little alternative rag of a weekly newspaper. They dug up enough dirt to force the major newspaper to cover the real issues (which it did, professionally well), and the result was a political pendulum-swing that this particular small state is still recovering from.
OK, so there were three, count 'em, only three major networks, plus this hodge-podge of local independant local stations. Then, cable TV got rolled out (and how _that_ happened is a really nasty story in itself - major money skullduggery is buried back there). Somewhere in the early to mid 80s CNN got traction through cable and started _humiliating_ the big networks! The 1990 Gulf War was telecast on CNN, much of it _live_! ABC, NBC, CBS had their faces pushed in the dirt by CNN! (I was interested, since I'd been in Kuwait only six months before. But, I was in Phoenix when the air war started, and heard the CNN guy while watching the realtime AA fire over Baghdad.)
So, then Ted Turner sold out to Time Warner. And then AOL took advantage of the NASDAQ stock bubble (can you say "Tulip Mania? - I knew you could) to swallow Time Warner whole. But nothing's changed, just the players, and their chances, now. There's new media out there, bubbling up, sharp and fresh and struggling for market share, which _will_ come....
Had to bite
erm.... yes. But it's a bit more tricky than that. Most of the money media outlets recieve isn't from the customers directly, but from advertising revenue. For example, the cover price of a dead tree copy of the New York Times is a tiny fraction of the revenue that edition will collect. It's more accurate to say the media outlets got big because *advertisers* got big on our money.
That's just the start. As has been pointed out, GE is a major owner of media outlets. Some of their most profitable exercises, however, have more to do with supplying industrial and weapons componentry. Jet engines, nuclear detonator components, and landmine componentry to domestic and overseas markets are some of the more striking items. I could promise to stop buying them, but I'm not yet a customer.
However, what they can do is take away your ability to make informed decisions. If the information required to make a choice is controlled by editors who understand the importance of responsibility to G.E.'s shareholders, then your ability to make decisions that reflect badly on G.E. is severly curtailed.
This isn't conspiracy theory - this is a basic fact. If you have any role at all in the modern corporate world, have a look around at who's getting promoted. It's usually people who have a pretty good sense of responsibility to the shareholders. To expect a media outlet, which is a company, to be subject to different rules is naive.
Given this, it's pretty unlikely you'll see articles dismissing a media outlet's parent company. Have a look at that list of who owns what media to get an idea of who's not going to get bad press.
Agreed. But have you noticed the drop in diversity over the past five years? Part of the point of the article is that Internet portals are going the way of newspapers. True, content of material on the Internet is mostly up to the individual users, but Quality of Service isn't. Which is going to get more hits - a flashy site, owned by a portal with huge bandwidth, or one not owned by said portal, that doesn't have the bandwidth to choke an ant.
In most of the developed world, finding good food instead of McFast Food is an uphill battle. It seems information is going the same way.
To answer the topic - what to do about it. Give a toss. Spread information. Use the Internet for something productive. Become known in your neighborhood as that wacko who babbles about media control, in the hopes that a few people will catch on and keep demand for diversity alive.
Anyone got more suggestions?
"A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five." -Groucho Marx
Wow! You used 769 words to completely miss the point. Is that some kind of record? "If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it" is exactly the argument these huge conglomerates use -- that should make anyone a bit suspicious straight off. Is that all freedom means to you? The choice between Brand X and Brand Y? Has it never occurred to you that society might be composed of anything other than atomised consumers making trivial consumer "choices" between two types of coloured sugar water or monogrammed running shoes?
The key here is just like radio: Local, Local, Local. Local folks presenting local issues concerning the local area. This is awfully hard to do with big media.
Most radio stations in the US are owned by a few (two?) companies (thanks to the wonderful "deregulation" of radio. Yipee for Ayn Rand -- i hope she likes listening to the same 5 songs from coast to coast).
If they were allowed to build a transmitter powerful enough to blanket the entire country, they wouldn't be wasting any more money on this "local" stuff. The internet can be "broadcast" from anywhere, so we'll see in the future exactly what we see now -- the top 10 sites having 75% of the web traffic (or whatver the statistic is).
We'll have local stuff on the net only because it's part of the power of customization and demographic targetting -- if they could get away with mass-produced content for everyone, they would. Its no less expensive to make local content, and you can only sell it one place!...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Monoliths have been directly linked to increases in weapon-making and violent clubbings, through studies on higher primates.
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Yes, I'm talking about the RIAA and MPAA...
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
The Columbia Journalism Review has a comprehensive list of the handful of corporation that control most of the news media in the United States and the rest of the world. There are a few expected faces such as AOL Time Warner, Viacom and Disney with a few surprises (General Electric, AT & T).
Where was the FCC when a handful of corporations slowly took over the media?
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Marketing practices by Sky can really kill any challengers - to get digital satellite TV, etc., you pay £40 for installation, and the monthly subscription. It is a good deal, but they end up owning virtually all of the content.
However, a balanced service does remain: on the news services section, both Sky news and CNN top the list, so it's not as if they limit the exposure using technology or anything (or, ahem, limit the broadcast quality of competing services cough-Windows XP and MP3-cough.
The terrestrial based national coverage is quite poor however - 4 channels, 2 of which insist on high taxes to pay for sub-par content. The other two are just bad.
Overall, I use the single service from Sky, and apart from perhaps high subscription rates (£36 a month) the single service is fine, and covers everything from news to teh american channels like Paramount and Sci-Fi channel.
However, the biggest downer to a big company having monopoly is, as we all know by now, that they can charge/increase fees and you really have no choice but to pay if there is no competing brand/service of similar quality.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Take your pick (listed in order of size by revenue):
General Electric (owns NBC)
AT&T (owns world's largest content delivery system, stake in portal/ISP excite@home, Liberty Media)
NT&T (cable & telephone monopoly in Japan)
Deutch Telekom (cable & telephone monopoly in Germany)
AOL/TimeWarner (need I say anything?)
Disney
Vivendi
Microsoft (2nd largest ISP/portal, partner in DreamWorks)
Bertlesmann (publishing giant, Napster partner)
News Corp (own Fox Networks, studio, magazines)
BCE (owns canada's largest private network and biggest national newspaper along with satellite TV)
OOPS that's more than 6 and I still haven't got to most of the newspaper companies, the radio company they mentioned in the article, or regional media firms (beleive it or not, you can't get ABC-NBC-CBS-Fox in Germany)
Will someone please tell me which six they are talking about?
It's a deplorable situation, but one that can be corrected. Curiously enough, the internet is one of the largest correcting factors, primarily because it is inherently two-way, and because the entry price is low.
Media companies know this. I suspect it is one of the driving factors behind big media's push to make the internet "simpler", as they put it. More like, say, television.
It's really hard to run an internet media company. After all, just about anybody can stand up and call bullshit on your stuff. They even seem to get a perverse satisfaction out of it.
I suspect that in the future, though the media world will realign itself. Large media will probably become feeds for smaller local media that have local advertising concerns not large enough for the big boys to worry about. The key here is just like radio: Local, Local, Local. Local folks presenting local issues concerning the local area. This is awfully hard to do with big media. The availability of more distribution channels at a local level also makes it harder on them.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
This is the same old kneejerk, Katzian song-and-dance that Slashdot seems to throw up every three months or so. There's one universal cure for big media corporations you don't like: Don't consume their product. Don't watch their movies or TV shows. Don't subscriibe to their ISPs or cable systems or online services or magazines. If you don't like what they produce, buy elsewhere. Or start your own company. If enough people boycott them, the power of the marketplace will force them to change their ways.
What's that you say? Not enough people will boycott them? That they'll thrive despite your boycott? That people who don't share your views will continue to patronize their service? Well GOSH, how SHOCKING that those mindless lemmings would DARE to have opinions other than your own! How dare they use AOL and subscribe to Time-Warner Cable and eat at McDonalds and shop at WalMart despite all the times that you've told them how politically incorrect such actions are! How dare they put their own convienance and financial well-being above the superior opinions of the fashionable elite!
Why, if those all those little people don't use their choices wisely, we'll just have to take those choices away from them! We'll just have to pass laws to tax large media congolomerates so we take money away from them and give it to government subsidized art that we, the politically correct ruling elite, judge to be superior. (Oh, wait. We already do that with PBS and the NEA.) We'll have to raise the taxes and fees passed on to the customers of media giants to punish them for making the wrong choice--just like we do for people who use tobacco. We'll have to file lawsuits against big media companies to drive them out of business--just like we're doing with the firearms industry. And if people still aren't using their freedom properly, we'll just have to outlaw bad media and throw its consumers in jail--just like we do with users of marijuana and cocaine. If we don't like what people choose, we'll just have to take that freedom away.
(/sarcasm)
Remember: Freedom of the press is for those who own one. If you don't like the choices available, go out and create your own. And if you work hard and make it a success, and AOL Time Warner Microsoft Beatrice comes along and says "Hey, Mr. Independent Press Guy, we'll pay you ten times what the book value of your company is worth and you can stop working those 80 hour weeks to clear 20K a year in profit so we can add you to our giant synergy machine," why, I'm SURE you'll turn all that money down. Just like Netscape did when AOL came calling. Just like Bungie did when Microsoft came calling.
Look, all this bitching about the current round of media concentration is just short-sighted, ahistorical whining that ignores the huge diversification of media created by technology. Go back 30 years ago, and what did you have? Three major TV networks. Two major wire news services. (You had more newspapers, but by and large they got much of their national and international news from the same few sources.) One phone company. No cable TV. No internet. No Slashdot!
And since then, look at the vast, technology-fueled growth in various forms of media:
Cable TV, with thousands of possible channels to choose from, of which several dozen or more will be on any given cable system.
Two competeing satelite TV firms, with hundreds of additional choices, many from around the world
Three more broadcast networks
Foriegn language channels
For that matter, more foreign language newspapers available more places
Tens of thousands of small press magazines fueled by the desktop publishing boom
Thousands of independent record companies fueled by the CD boom
Untold millions of websites, all available at a mouse click, thanks to computers and the internet.
Thirty thousand newsgroups (even if half of them are for porn; and, for that matter:)
Multitudes upon multitudes of adult videos and and porn sites where before there were dirty theaters and a handfull of skin mags (a vast number of choices, albeit of a particular type)
E-mail
FTP, Napster, Gneutella, and a thousand other file sharing programs that keep popping up no matter how hard they tru to shut them down
Et. Frigging Cetera.
So, in short, stop whining. You have more media choices available to you than any other people at any point in the history of mankind.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/