More Media Consolidation Coming Soon

Logic Bomb writes: "According to the Washington Post, a federal appeals court yesterday made a ruling that could make the last couple years of media consolidation look like nothing. Some major FCC rules about media ownership were ruled as "arbitrary" and therefore illegal, most importantly the one preventing a company from owning the cable system and television stations in the same place. Also, though the FCC gets one more chance to defend it, the rule about a company not owning stations reaching more than 35% of the national viewership may get tossed out too."

Comments

Spectacular

[zpengo]

This is great news. Any empire that gets that large inevitably becomes unstable (see "Roman Empire", p. xxxvi). Maybe this is the only way to get revolution to occur.

It's like a leashed dog. You hold the leash, the dog will pull on it. You let go, the dog will run around a bit then get tired and stop.

Re:Spectacular

[Chiasmus_]

Yes, any empire that gets larger than its carrying capacity will eventually fail. Certainly. An empire encompassing the Mediterranean, most of Europe, and some of Asia and Africa is impractical when it takes three months to get a message from one corner to the other, let alone a defense force.

The carrying capacity of a physical government, needless to say, has grown. The carrying capacity of a media corporation is likely much larger than the earth. Your argument is optimistic, but I can't say I buy it. AOL Time Warner might crumble if it tried to overextend itself to, say, Alpha Centauri, but something tells me it'll do just fine capturing, say, 99% of the market share.

Who Owns What

[SkewlD00d]

Who Owns What, the list keeps getting smaller and the entries get longer.

Unrestrained monopolies are poison to a republic

[Mr. Mikey]

When one corporation owns all the news outlets, they can decide what you see and hear, and have the money to buy whatever legislation or legal shielding they need. "But, I get my news from the net!" That's great... until they restrict that too. "But, some entrepreneur will start their own news service" Yes, perhaps... until OneCorp buys the right politicians, or puts pressure on your ISP. A nightmare.

Not like it matters these days...

[Riskable]

The reason why these restrictions were put into place were pretty much for NEWS. That way, you would never have just one (or even two) sources reporting the news (in theory, the stations will correct eachother and ferociously try to "get the scoop" first). It was to create competition and better the general quality of the content on your TV stations. The separation of local and cable-based viewership was also thought to be necessary in this regard.

However, in recent years, companies that wish they could merge, but can't due to regulations, have found the perfect way around the problem: Content sharing agreements.

So instead of having to come up with ORIGINAL programming, news, and movies, they can just copy eachother's work. These sharing agreements also cross into paper and Internet media as well.

So it used to be that if media company X did something terrible, companies Y and Z would report on it. However, nowadays we'll see a content sharing agreement between company X and Y, with Z sharing content with Y as well. Since none of them want to lose their 'agreements' they won't say anything bad about eachother... Or resist buying into 3rd party content.

This way they don't have to merge and they don't have to share revenues, but they can save a ton of money--at the cost of original programming and the public's best interest.

Re:Not like it matters these days...

[Keith Mickunas]

Not only was it for protection of different news sources, but it also keeps advertising rates in check. There are some suits going on regarding clear channel. I hate to sound like a clear channel taking over the world alarmist because I've already posted once about them, but they are a problem. I read a while back (sorry I don't have a link handy) that they sometimes sell radio stations to small companies, whose ownership is unclear, when they approach the limit in a particular market. Then they operate that station for the other company. Some of these things are fact, the unclear thing is the ownership of the small company.

The point is, when one media conglomerate controls a significant amount of a single media type (radio, TV, newspaper) in one market, they then control the ad rates in that market. That's a major problem.

Arbitrary?

[Waffle Iron]

Some major FCC rules about media ownership were ruled as "arbitrary"

This is great news. There are thousands of arbitrary laws on the books that must now be repealed. Let's start with this one: in my state, you can't buy beer on Sundays before noon. What's up with that? Why not Tuesdays 2-6 p.m.?

Microsoft is nothing

[SilentChris]

I love people who are constantly arguing against the Microsoft monopoly on Slashdot, as if it were the most important thing in the world. It reminds me of people who fight for the lives of animals but could care less that a war is going on.

THESE mergers are the killers, people. When you own all the media, all the ways to send it, and the people and resources to shape it, you have enormous power. Who cares if one company runs the software under a couple hundred million computers. We're talking BILLIONS of people affected by the media they see, hear, and consume.

Re:Microsoft is nothing

[akb]

Actually, Microsoft is becoming a media giant and its looks like it will be able to join the club. Bill Gates and Paul Allen have been investing in cable, telco, etc forever. Microsoft is bankrolling the Comcast / ATT merger, and has a plethora of media interests MSNBC, MSN, ISP for QWEST, ISP for DirecTV (and maybe soon Echostar as well), Xbox, cell phones, set top boxes. They are extraordinarily well positioned for broadband / interactive TV / video on demand services that are about to be rolled out.

Its very clear that Microsoft has its sights set on cornering the new media market. And I agree that this pales to what they have done on the desktop.

Re:Maybe its time to registed a new domain name

[SkewlD00d]

$ whois www.mcaoltimewarnercnnattcomcastnbcabccbscisco.com

McWorld (NETBLK-MCAOL-DTC)
1 OwnJ00 Wy
McCentral, McVA 00001
McUS
McWorld

Netname: AOL-DTC
Netblock: 0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255

Coordinator:
McAmerica Online, Inc. (AOL-NOC-ARIN) domains@AOL.NET
0

Domain System inverse mapping provided by:

DNS-01.NS.AOL.COM 1.1.1.232

Record last updated on 27-Apr-1998.
Database last updated on 19-Feb-2002 19:57:50 EDT.

Don't like corporate-controlled gov't policy?

[Jeremi]

... then stop voting for it. The sooner people stop voting for the Demopublican Party, the sooner we can wrest control of our country/airwaves/lives back from corporations.

As for people who argue that voting for a 3rd party is 'throwing your vote away', I submit that not voting for a 3rd party is throwing your vote away, since it doesn't much matter whether you vote democratic or republican anymore; either way you are just voting for corporate control of government.

As for which 3rd party to vote for, I prefer the Green party (natch) because they don't accept contributions from corporations, but there are probably other good 3rd parties out there as well. Voting for any of them will at least signal your discontent with the status quo, and maybe the demos/repubs will take notice and clean up their act (well.... could happen, anyway)