Slashdot Mirror
FCC Approves Media Consolidation
evenprime writes "You can expect more media consolidation in the future. CBS is reporting that the FCC has approved the media deregulation that was previously discussed on Slashdot. Expect Clear Channel, Viacom and their kin to get bigger, and the radio to have even less diversity (a situation that some people think is responsible for falling CD sales)."
"If I were a record seller, I'd lay heaps of blame on radio, which used to be 80 per cent of the reason people bought music. ..... Today, that figure is closer to 20 per cent, insiders say."
I know the radio sucks, but I had no idea that the record industry felt the same way. Seems like everything to do with music needs a remodel.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Sounds like it's time to start maintainin
a list (web site, blog...) of the
non-alignend radio & TV stations....vote
with your tuner.
It increases the ownership from 35% to 45%, but prevents mergers from the big 4 (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC). I'm not sure the % increase would make a huge difference anyway, but by not allowing the big guys to merge will keep some semblance of diversity in programming. That's assuming you think there is currently any diversity in OTA offerings.
Also the radio markets are still limited to a max. of 8 in markets of 45 or greater stations. Same issue as above, if there is no variety now, how in the world are they going to make it much worse?
-- Rick
somebody sets up 'public access' style internet TV? IPv6 has great multicast handling, and we're getting more and more bandwidth at home. We essentially have all the tools, and millions of potential channels. Anything you want to watch, when you want to watch it, all for the price of cable or dsl.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
haha! exactly. Here in Memphis there are about 4 different stations with similar playlists. The really funny thing is that you can start on one station and hear a particular song... switch to any one of the others and you will hear the same song within 10 minutes. Sometimes you can flip through all four stations and you will hear the exact same thing playing on one or two of the other stations. I've pretty much stopped listening to the radio because of it.
What isn't mentioned is that there is growing bipartisan distaste for this ruling. Trent Lott and several democrats have spoken out against it and are talking of bringing the issue to congress. Hopefully more republicans will jump off ship and support Lott and the others.
-Sean
So, there are going to be two possible things that can come of this: One, the media companies will be effective at giving people what they want. In this case, both consumers and the media companies win.
The other option is that media companies are not effective at giving people what they want. In this case, people will stop listening to them and the media companies will lose. Consumers will lose a little in that the radios in their cars will become pretty much useless. However, they'll be able to branch out into other forms of entertainment -- DVDs, video games, independent music, web surfing, and so on. The real winners will be the companies that figure out how to give consumers what they want.
I think that one can make a pretty good argument that the media ownership rules have outlived their usefulness. When each city only had 4 TV stations, a dozen radio stations and one newspaper, the rules made some sense because it guaranteed a wider variety of information and entertainment. But now, if I don't like what's on my local radio station, I can stream music from some independent station across the country. If I think the news from my local ABC news/newspaper/6 favorite radio stations is biased, there are a thousand options for me on the internet.
I'd argue that local broadcast media (TV/radio) and local newspapers are something of an anachronism anyway, for everything but the local stuff. I don't receive the local paper, because I can go online and read the news (for free). I rarely watch network TV because I have 50 cable stations and I'd rather watch Comedy Central than ABC.
To me, this seems to be equivilant to complaining about how few choices we have in bus and train transportation, while ignoring the fact that we have so many choices in cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, airplanes, taxis, rollerskates, subways and so on.
Double plus good, that! Looks like news, sounds like news, but there's no news in it.
He who controls the media, controls the people.
This has nothing to do with liberalism.
Market consolidation is just a pretty way of saying COMMUNISM.
The whole point of capitalism (for those of not Robber Barons) is the beneficial side effects of competition that arise out of multiple players existing in the marketplace. Eliminate choice and diversity from the marketplace and you are left with the unacceptable choice of either putting up with the crap or stop participating in the market.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...the Golden Rule. You know...he who has the gold makes the rules.
It's rather sad, really. Here's a good example why: My home state is North Dakota. When Grand Forks and Fargo had a three-day ice storm during the winter of '96-'97, there was a radio station in town which 24-7 covered every single piece of news or announcement related to the event. Even with the phone lines down, our high school speech team was able to use the radio to tell everybody back home that we were alright.
On the other hand, a little more than a year ago, Minot (town of about 38,000 people in central North Dakota) had a train carrying anhydrous ammonia (cheap fertilizer) that derailed in the town early in the morning. Everybody instinctively turned on the radio (either after hearing the crash, seeing a huge white cloud of ammonia coming their way, or feeling the smoke burn their lungs) to find out what was going on, only to hear music. Six of the seven radio stations in Minot are owned by ClearChannel. Afterwards, when asked for a comment, ClearChannel said that they were in the business of playing music and selling advertising, not 24-7 local news coverage.
It's about the money.
All well and good, but no doubt they will be just as open for public comment as they were on the ruling itself. Let's see, most human beings were against the rule change while monsters like Big Corporations were all that mattered.
The FCC will have a massive blindspot for the tremendous deficiencies in the media as long as Bush and buds are in power. They are NOT interested in furthering dissenting voices' (anything other than conservative Republican cheerleaders) access to the airwaves. They are NOT interested in ANYTHING that doesn't further pad the pockets of rich corporate heads in the media. They are NOT interested in anything that might produce news media that isn't 100% behind the current regime.
Unless there is a new Administration in 2 years, the rules will be a priori assumed good regardless of public comment or real evidence to the contrary.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
The Newspapers, TV Stations, and Radio stations will soon have the same parent company.
In reality this will hurt in that Newspapers will be bought by bigger corporations (clear channel), and the content will be dumbed down, local personalities will be "Right-sized" to control profit margins in place of Market researched personalities.
This hurts, and you will notice the difference. Right now newspapers and newsstations keep each other in check by double-checking facts. Soon you will have one person double-checking facts for the radio, newspaper, and television. You get one slant, one idea, and one perspective from all three. That is where the diversity will be lost. I hope you like reading BBC newspapers over the internet, because soon that's where the best news you get will come from.
"they never bothered to even cover many of the anti-war protests that occured."
Then where did YOU learn about these protests? Did you attend all of them? Or did you learn about them someplace other than FOX?
It doesn't matter how many independent voices there are if you only use a sample size of one to form your opinions. FOX had very little on the demonstrations, MSNBC seemed embarrassed to be covering them, but did a bit. CNN at times seemed downright cheerful to be showing them, while NPR felt almost as if it was out and out participating. At least, that was the impression I got as I WATCHED THEM ALL. (well, listened in the case of NPR).
The media giants are not one large monolith most of the time. I think the FCC is wrong because this ruling will make it *more likely* for stations to stifle minority opinions, and there is no appreciable upside for the public to offset this potential problem.
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Except, I don't see the option to put limitations back in. So if it does become a monoculture, there isn't much the FCC could do.
It takes a partisan 3 to 2 FCC vote to relax regulations so the conservative CEO's of Fox and Clearchannel can have yet more power, but it would take a huge (think ma-bell proportion) congressional act to cut them back down if they ever get too big.
I really wish the FCC had to explain (and justify) why they think it's in the public interest to allow mega media companies to expand further. So far their reason is, "well, we couldn't think of any good reason not to!", even though thousands of americans emailed and called in plenty of reasons against deregulation.
$8.95/mo web hosting