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Ted Turner's Beef With Big Media
pizen writes "Washington Monthly has an article from Ted Turner where he talks about the problems with the media conglomerates and calls for them to be busted: 'At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates.'"
"In 1996, the FCC did away with numerical caps altogether and raised the audience-reach cap to 35 percent. This wasn't necessarily bad for Turner Broadcasting; we had already achieved scale. But seeing these rules changed was like watching someone knock down the ladder I had already climbed."
This isn't surprising from TT, he's always been a whacky pseudoHippy.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
This is the same Ted Turner that, while saying oil and gas are evil is making a LOT of money off of them.
" With the recent upturn in natural gas prices, Turner's holdings are worth billions. He recently signed an agreement to double the number of gas wells on the Vermejo to 1,060 wells and El Paso Corporation is paying him a 6.5 percent royalty."
He thinks it is OK for HIM to have such things, but DAMN IT! us normal people shouldn't!
Why not just change the law to make media companies to accommodate to customers needs?
There's already a remedy for customers whose needs aren't being met . . . go someplace else. You don't have to watch CNN, or Fox News, or MSNBC, or others. Your choices will be more limited, but you DO have alternatives. The law will never be as effective as customer demand at compelling businesses to run effectively.
Sadly, the media companies are as successful as they are because the services they provide are popular with the public. Personally, that fact appalls me, but it's the truth.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
25 years ago the cable TV industry was in its infancy, and Turner leveraged that into making TBS and CNN successes.
But the entire cable TV industry is a lot more mature and saturated these days, making it harder for marginal startups to continue to exist - and they can pretty much forget about growing themselves into multi-billion-dollar players.
This also applies to internet businesses. Five or so years ago you could have tried to start an internet auction business to compete with EBay. That won't work now.
ehh, No.
Ted Turner is a human being. AOL/Time Warner is a corporation.
Ted Turner has a little more than 1% ownership of that corporation.
If you had RTFAed, you would understand why he is saying this... if he wanted start another venture like CNN (which I am sure he does), it would be impossible to compete with the conglomerates as they have such an anticompetitive stranglehold on all forms of media.
That sentence scares the hell out of me. You want laws put in place by politicians that dictate what we want? Every politician has an agenda and bias. I, for one, would never conceed to such a thing. They would pick something even more liberal or conservative than what we already have.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
If the "big media conglomerates" aren't offering people what they want because they have to cater to the largest demographic (lowest common denominator) possible, it seems to me this creates more openings for the smaller fish, as the "big guys" can't afford to tackle and grow the niche markets.
Just because he is media doesn't mean that he represents the sickness that is sucking this country dry. Back in the day the robber barons has pissing contents with houses and wives and congress hos. Now it is yachts and starlets and congress hos. He has yachts, but also give a billion to the UN.
Now many would say that this is simply self interest, not enlighten self interest. And most conservatives hate his priorities. But that is just politics, and has little to do with this country's need for diverse media outlets, which is basic do democracy, with a small d.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Most people on /. think that rich=right-wing.
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He's actually criticizing himself to some degree too - I have to give him some credit there
His remarks are applicable to lots of media, radio stations (something like 3 companies run 90% of the FM stations), the book publishing industry (small presses are going extinct, and about 4 massive publishers run the market now), bookstores (about a 60% of US independent bookstores have closed in the past 5 years), mega retailers (Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc) have destroyed the smaller, 'mom & pop' businesses.
While many people think the 'uber' stores are a good thing - ultimately we are often given less choice, more average/mediocre products, and little innovation and originality.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Only in America? It's interesting to view the article from the viewpoint of Noam Chomsky's classic work on the consolidation of American media, "Manufacturing Consent". Approached from either perspective, the future of independent news media in America looks to be in poor health. Turner's quote from Justice Hugo Black seemed to bridge the approach Turner has taken to that of Chomsky: "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
How about it? Let's slashdot bad news agencies!
Boy, you didn't RTFA.
He's not pissed that there's a Fox News, he's not pissed that there is an ABC or MSNBC or whatever. His whole point is that you are losing out because the way the markets have changed.
These giant companies are stifling innovation, they are making it damn near impossible for anyone to get a start in that area. In order for a station to show anything they force the people who made it to sell it to them. Otherwise it won't get shown. You don't like it, go fart in the wind.
One of my favorite quotes:
the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers.
You can see that now. Look at all the "Reality shows" everyone hates them. But after the first one came along it became a 'me too' thing. There's no innovation there. He also mentions this. (I'm reading as I'm typing this up, so I was a little ahead there.)
The Nielsen ratings are dangerous in a similar way--because they scare companies away from good shows that don't produce immediate blockbuster ratings. Emphasis mine.
As far as media goes, we now only have a few options to go to. CNN has a slant, Fox has a slant, they all have their own political agendas. So where can I really go to get 'fair and balanced news' or more to the point factual news and not some BS?
I really liked this quote from Viacom:
"In this duopoly, we should be able to control the news in the marketplace."
Naturally, corporations say they would never suppress speech.
Sure they would never do that... But when they control the news, well there goes speech. How many programs or news items have not been aired because it was critical of the parent company?
Turner was also pointing out that the people really don't want this consolidation, but the lobbying power and the way these companies are going about it (not broadcasting the news and making it known) there's no way to go about and change it.
As an aside, how many people have you talked to that have given up watching TV because of the poor programming? My wife and I have.