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.'"

Comments

Re:Why bust?

[palutke]

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.

Re:Why bust?

[Cat_Byte]

Why not just change the law to make media companies to accommodate to customers needs?

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.

Re:Calling the Kettle Black eh?

[tomhudson]

So what's to stop him from starting up another one if the current one sucks so badly?

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.

Re:Calling the Kettle Black eh? {so...?}

[Morpeth]

It doesn't mean his points aren't valid. Just because someone is 'part of the system' doesn't mean they can't say something legit or insightful on an issue. To some degree because he has been in that world, he has more insight into it than most of us I imagine.

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.

You should tonight

[joggle]

Charlie Rose is going to have a 1-hr interview with Ted Turner tonight, hopefully this subject will come up during the course of the interview (11pm local time on PBS usually). You also might like to check out this book written by a former exec at CNN--Bonnie Anderson (her interview from the other night). This is what she had to say about abstaining from watching the news on TV:

You know, I had one person tell me on a talk show, "You know, I just quit watching news," and I'm thinking, "That's really--that's a shame." Pick up the phone. E-mail, pick up the phone, call the network or call the news station and say, "I disagree." If only one person does it, it's not gonna make a difference. I pick up the phone constantly and call my local stations and say, "Why on earth did you just do that?" But if you do get a lot of people who are complaining, who say, "This is not the quality of news we need"--if it becomes a movement and if people realize that it's patriotic to speak out this way--this is true patriotism. Let's demand something that our Constitution protects for us. Let's demand it. And so pick up the phone, write letters, you know, write e-mails, and just say, "We want news that is far more directed towards everybody in this country and that's honest and truly fair."

How about it? Let's slashdot bad news agencies!