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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.'"
Unless we fight back against Big Media, we are going to lose, and lose hard, a lot of the things we have come to take for granted in the past 20 years of the Internet...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"...bust up the big conglomerates"
This coming from the same AOL - Time Warner?? Time Warner that owns Magazines, Cable Stations (and not just one mind you...)
And THEN merged with AOL?
Ok Ted....
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Why not just change the law to make media companies to accommodate to customers needs?
I thought Ted Turner owned them all...
Keep in mind, this is Ted Turner, the crazy Southren billionare we're talking about here. This guy IS the media!
,
A quick snippet from his company's website, http://www.turner.com
Many are familiar with TBS, Inc.'s groundbreaking network, CNN, one of the world's most respected and trusted sources for news and information. Since its launch more than 20 years ago, CNN's reach has extended to 15 cable and satellite television networks; two private, place-based networks; two radio networks; 12 Web sites; CNN Mobile; and CNN Newsource, the world's most extensively syndicated news service.
TBS, Inc. is also home to familiar entertainment networks such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies as well as specialized networks such as Turner South and Boomerang.
TBS, Inc. is also home to The Atlanta Braves, nascar.com and pga.com
Aaaannd he's the vice chairman of Time Warner. Just goes to show, this guy really is nuttier than a fruitcake.
Pot? Kettle? Black?
Ted Turner is still just irritated that HIS media conglomerate was hijacked by AOL in the bubble years.
-Joe
Ted Turner spent billions of dollars to buy the rights of a bunch of classic movies, which he then went and colourized. He owns at least three stations that I can think of (I don't watch a lot of TV, so there may be more)--TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies.
This man is in no position to talk about big media. This is like Bill Gates bemoaning monopolistic business practices in the software industry.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Where the fuck have you been since 9/11?
...that Ted Turner sees this whole conglomerate issue too much in black and white.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
In todays's megacorp world could you imagine starting something like CNN. It was much simpler 25 years ago when Turner did it. Disney, Viacom, AOLTW, Murdoch, it is very hard for a newcomer to break in now. The last newcomer was Fox and thats been over ten years ago. I don't think they would have made it without Murdochs newspaper empire to back them up till they got a foothold.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Mr Bachman and Mr Overdrive?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Face it: TV is dead .
I don't watch TV much these days: mostly BBC World for news and a few cable channels that broacast things like "Six Feet Under" or documentaries. That's it. It's probably a couple of hours a week, tops.
Most of the news and entertainment that I like, I obtain through the Internet, and it's been like that for several years.
So, am I worried about media consolidation? No. Am I worried about Internet censorship and Internet Provider consolidation? Yes. Actually a lot more worried.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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!
...John D. Rockefeller has expressed some concern with the size and potential political influence of big oil companies.
Yes Ted Turner is easily the center of the evils he's complaining about . . . . but well, did anyone RTFA before bashing him?
Sure there's hypocrisy in Turner saying big media should be broken up, but he explains himself rather well. I admit I haven't even read the whole article yet. Maybe he's a little bit bitter (AOL), but he starts by explaining that he could never have gotten started in the current environment and then goes on to detail lots of real problems with the current media. Why can't he just be a very smart old man, who knows more about this topic than probably any of us, and is pissed because his industry is going to hell?
WebTV is the next big thing! Honest!
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I don't always agree with Ted, but I've got to give him credit for speaking his mind. I don't understand, though, why it would have to serve his interest, as opposed to the greater good, for him to speak out. Are you that cynical of wealthy people?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Well?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"Well I say he does have to shoot me now! So shoot me now!"
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
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.
In other words, Ted's pissed that the nasty evil conservative Fox News Channel is more popular and less vilified than CNN, so now it's time to change the rules.
I'm sure Big Media was perfectly fine to Ted back in the AOL-Time-Warner heyday, but now, his empire's receded, it's time to lop the winners off at the knees. Why should he care now -- after all, he's made his Big Media money.
Wah wah, Ted Turner. Wah waaaaaaaah.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
I know that that Amsterdam stuff is some good shit, but you should think about putting the bong down for day or so. Seriously.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Yes, CNN is slanted. It is clear. So is fox. They're both retarded.
But did you RTFA? Ted Turner (big media incarnate) is writing against big media...writing and saying it needs to be broken up. It's a pretty damned big sign when one of the largest media moguls in the world is outright stating that big media needs to be broken up. It wouldn't have the same impact if some guy from Joe's Broadcasting said it as Joe has ulterior motives. What motives does Ted Turner have? He has everything to LOSE by having big media broken up. Everything but his honor and dignity, and quite frankly I applaud his commentary.
"Did you see Bill Maher on Larry King Live last night?" Does it matter? He clearly made a point that in order to compete with big media in this market you need to be big media. He grew accordingly. His corporations became corrupted accordingly, good intentions or no.
It reminds me of the way the japanese grow watermelons to be squared...something will only grow as large as its container. And the FCC keeps increasing the size of the container for big media. If the FCC elimitated the viewer-base cap on big media altogether, then big media would turn into monopoly-media, inc. Then it would be like some totalitarian regime.
If the FCC lowered the cap, among other actions, there would certainly be more diversity in ownership, not just diversity of programming. That is the key.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Isn't Ted pretty far left? He married Hanoi Jane, and he donated billions to the UN.
Most people didn't RTFA and made the obvious comment about his being a big media company.
Quoth the article:
"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."
To sum up the point that he made in the article, small media companies have more management freedom and thus a greater freedom to innovate. These innovations cause change in the greater world as larger conglomerates start "me-too" enterprises to compete with the new company. By changing rules to favor larger companies, it kills the innovation happening even at the large ones (since the practice of "me-too" requires someone to do it first).
He simply wants the same opportunities for other people that he had.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Ted Turner is as right-wing as Ralph Nader. He's been a hardcore liberal since he began to obsess over nuclear war in the 1980s. Just take a look at the money losing "Goodwill Games," his money-losing propaganda gift to the Soviet Union. Or perhaps you didn't noice him marrying Jane Fonda.
Crow T. Trollbot
his point is that targeted regulation to maintain a competitive market is a _good thing_ for capitalism. The problem with cars, is that the major automakers _own_ the distribution channel. If anything, with the smaller part manufacturers that have sprung up as a result of outsourcing, it is becoming more possible to start a small car manufacturer. Distribution channels, _define_ markets, and these need to be regulated so that their monopoly power cannot be extended into manufacturing and production, both of which need not be monopolies.
Ted's not nearly as right-wing as you'd think. He's been a long time champion of the UN, an unequaled critic of organized religion, particularly Christianity, and was married to the one of all-time most hated leftoids ever, "Hanoi" Jane Fonda. Check out his Official Site for his beliefs on a myriad of issues that are definitely not the Republican Party Line.
People are saying Turner is the proverbial kettle calling the pot black. They miss the point.
Yes, he built CNN but no longer owns it. He has no control of AOL Time Warner, and if he did it is quite clear they would be a very different company. The empire building is not his doing. I've read a lot of interviews with Turner, and he strikes me as a bombastic and determined man, but he has always been against "The Big Guys" and trying to battle for "The Little Guys" because he's always seen himself as the little guy. Go read a history of CNN to see what I mean.
As for the general point of this article, he has a point. The company that disturbs me the most actually is Disney. Down in Florida they have effectively got their own government for several hundred thousand square acres, they have a town in which they control everything (called Celebration IIRC), they have changed state law so that nobody can be declared dead on Disney property, and have interests in more government projects than an entertainment company really should. They are literally, not figuratively, a law unto themselves. How the hell did that happen? How can you compare Turner's business interests with that lot?
On a day when I have readjusted my outlook on life in general after reading the slashdot article and associated links on Joe Trippi, thinking about this stuff just makes me mad quite frankly.
I don't know much about Ted Turner, I understand he's hardly the most angelic of businessmen. However that has nothing to do with any of the arguments he has put forwardm namely that lax FCC regulations have done nothing but stifle innovation,competition and quaility over the media as a whole.
The media conglomerates will argue for less rules and regulations, a laisse faire approach. But as we know, unregulated markets lead to only one thing. Monopolies. This is especially true in the mass media field. It costs relativily little for a TV or Radio broadcaster to reach an extra 10 million viewer/listeners. They just turn up the wattage on their antennae. This means companies can easily expand and grow without any significant investement. This is unlike most industries, where in order to expand, companies need to invest in more raw materials and manpower, hindering their ability expand to a point where they dominate.
However for mass media, and even software, expansion is easy. It's even more so if you centralise all your content and simply broadcast and sell the same thing to everyone, which is what has happened. Turner is absolutly right. The big guns have taken over, due to the ease of expansion, and the difficulties of entry for independants. And now that they have gained a monopoly, they have abused their positions by promoting bad TV. People spend less time watching TV now, not because of other distractions, but because TV is simply bad. What else do you expect from a monopoly except a low quaility product. He's dead right about reality TV. The number one reason there is so much of it is because it is cheap.
Whatever about Turner, his points are good. Regulations need to be tightened. Having only 3-4 companies with complete control over a medium, is quite frankly dangerous, as well as foolish. The examples of censorship in the article are frightening. What happens when the big guns decide the only news we need is COPS and LA car chases?
Rampant capitalism leads to feudalism. You've got to have rules, otherwise everybody gets a bad deal.
The author makes good points. I wonder if the mainstream media will give them air time?
May the Maths Be with you!
And if you'd RTFA, he completely covers that point - noting why it happened, why he would do it again, and why its horribly, horribly broken to be able to.
The government isnt doing its job, and he makes it clear that big media will only get bigger unless government starts doing its job again.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Believing that Ted holds similar views is not an extraordinary stretch of the imagination.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Are you kidding me? The man buys up tonnes of commercial land, reestablishes working grasslands, re-introduces buffalo (a declining, indigenous, massive mammal that once numbered in tens-of-millions on the NA praries) and you have a PROBLEM with this?
The man is the largest private land-owner in the USA as a result of this effort, and some environmental-denier cranks want to nit-pick the most ridiculous faux-pas he commits? "He bulldozed a hilltop to improve the sighlines of a mountain range" is the best they can come up with?
When you are finished trying to restore a massive bio-region out of your OWN pocket, i'll listen to your nonsense character assasination. Until then, fuck-off.
It sounds like the man's motivation and execution are in the best inerests of the continent's environmental health... and your worried about a few small issues? If you were so damned concerned, why dont you stop the bulldozing of the COUNTLESS suburbs scrawling all over the damn place... look outside your window right now, there is LOTS you can complain about. Not Ted Turner building the largest bio-reserve on the continent.
OR are you simply one of these anti-tree-hugger environemental-deniers? always looking to pick small holes in the efforts of people trying to do something for the environement? Selfless-ness make you uncomfortable? Cant fathom someone doing something GOOD for its own sake? Does that depth of character cause you to question yourself? Are you compeled to undermine their motivation to justify your own myopic selfishness?
Ok, I don't really care much for Ted Turner or his comments here but it would be nice to see arguments that are based on Ted Turner today instead of Turner five to ten years ago. Here are some things you might have missed happening:
1. Ted Turner is not married to Jane Fonda. They got a divorce.
2. Turner does not own CNN, TBS, etc. except for the small amount of stock he might still own in AOL-Time Warner company. (RTFA)
3. Turner did not own CNN at the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger.
4. Turner WAS Vice Chairman of Time Warner (who bought CNN) when the AOL-Time Warner merger happened. (According to previous link, he opposed the merger.)
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
he donated billions to the UN.
The UN, believe it or not, is not a left-wing organization. It was formed by FDR, Churchill, Stalin and many others after World War II to prevent another World War. (History scholars, forgive my simplifications.)
Somehow, certain right-wing radicals have created the notion that the UN, other multilateral institutions, and internationalism in general are left-wing ideas and that reactionary, isolationist right-wing radicalism is in the center.
Much of the Republican party is internationalist. Working with other countries isn't idealism, it's practical and necessary, just like a business working with other businesses, and citizens working with each other and obeying the law.
You haven't won. You've merely gotten out of the immediate battleground, and are ignoring the War.
Part of TT's point is that Big Media is exerting too much control over the news. No matter how good someone may be at making decisions, feed them defective information and the 'perfectly made' decisions based on that information will be defective, too. For instance, your neighbors, your zoning board, voters, etc.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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
Truner wanting to break up big media is simply a distraction from the real issue. That society can't survive the information age with copyrights in tact. Get rid of copyrights, and the other problems will solve themselves. But it is precicely that he wants to keep his cozy copyright monopolies that he is trying to force a breakup of the media conglomerates - the copyright system corrupts the industry so bad that he can't spawn innovation from within, so he's trying to get the government to force it from the outside instead.
This is a bunch of BS - there is no way the Internet is going to be shut down by government or big media. Take off the tinfoil hat and settle down a bit.
...Ted Turner is the little guy.
No, I'm not talking about Ted Turner's article. It's not the BS. It's right on. The BS is everyone who thinks that Ted Turner has to have an alterior motive to voice an opinion like this.
The truth of the matter is, Ted is damn-spot-on right. Every word of that article is something that every American should heed.
You don't think it's a problem? Have you watched Fox News lately? Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is one of the huge abusers that Turner is referring to. There is currently a lawsuit against Fox to have "Fair and Balanced" be eliminated as their motto. Don't believe me? Check out Outfoxed.org
Why do you think the media coverage has been so miserable during this presidency? Why has the editorial content been so weak that it has failed to raise a single eyebrow? The effects of corporate media domination are all around us and we're letting them tell us it's okay!
Microsoft, for example, conducts a great deal of its business outside the law. No, Microsoft is not above the law, they simply find it is more profitable to break our laws and pay the fines. Over and over and over again. And don't think this is limited to our buddy Billy's empire. Breaking the law in the name of profits is de rigeur the order of the day in corporate America. Remember Enron? Now add Monsanto, AOL Time-Warner, ALCOA, and a hundred other giants.
The corporate music giants are blackmailing our universities through their puppet group, the RIAA. "Pony up for our legal Napster service or we'll sue you and your students all the way to the poor house."
If any of you doubt this, check your local movie listings and see the film "The Corporation." If it isn't showing near you, wait a little while and rent or buy it when it comes out on DVD. (I'm pretty sure I saw it on IRC the other day...) These are issues we must all think about, whether we agree with the views presented or not.
IN ORDER TO MAKE UP OUR MINDS, WE MUST FIRST PULL OUR HEADS OUT OF THE SAND AND USE THEM! You don't have to agree with me, I don't require blind confidence. I do, however, ask that you to take the time to learn about and consider these issues. Reject them if you will, but do so only once you understand the issues. How can we reject ideas we know nothing about?
We must call our legislators to action. We need to get the corporations and their lobbyists out of Washington. We need to create new restrictions on corporate behavior that protect the interests of the public good. If we don't protect ourselves from the actions of corporations, who will? The corporations themselves certainly won't. It's simply not profitable to do so, and profit is the only motivator in the conciousness of the corporation.
How about it? Let's slashdot bad news agencies!
Imagine that you're in Soviet Russia (where media controls you). You have three networks, but all three of them air the same stories, and are blatantly politically biased towards the government. How are you going to get alternative news? How are you going to have sufficient information to act as a proper democracy? Russia happens to be a good example today, because while it's nominally become a democracy, its media is once again as subserviant to the ruling structures that its democracy is suffering. If you're in Moscow and you want to hear news which is critical of Putin or supportive of anyone else, you're going to have a hard time trying to find media which will air those views.
For those who say that competition between the oligarchs of media will prevent that, look again at Russia. What happens if the government "rewards" those who look favorably on its policies and "punishes" those who don't? Well, if there are 100 sources of news, then it doesn't matter, because they're not going to control all of them. But if there are only 3 or 4? How difficult would it be to "convince" all 3 or 4 major news sources that they should report a particular way on a story?
And diversity of smallish news outlets doesn't help either. If you say "oh, well, we've got these hundred small internet sites and newspapers," the problem is that their credibility is in doubt with most people, because they take information on who to believe is credible from the major sources. So if you say to someone you get your news from NBC, and someone else says that they get their news from FooBar.com, if you're a normal person you're going to think they're a crackpot or incorrectly informed, because it lacks credibility.
So imagine a situation where all major, credible news organizations are controlled by 3 people. Imagine how that would impact democracy. Now tell me that media is just another mature industry.
It looks like John Kerry has a net worth of at least $164 million, his wife has a net worth of an estimated $1 billion, Edwards has a net worth between $12 million and $60 million, Dick Cheney at about $50 million, and finally George W. Bush at about $15 million.
While being a slashdotter might be a step in the right direction, most of what ends up on here is regurgitated from fairly mainstream sources. Why don't more people harness technology to share information with their neighbors? Especially local information. Sure there are sites like indymedia.org, but what about people doing real independent reporting?
Anybody got examples?
Ayn Rand books are nothing but rants (and long, poorly written rants at that) justifying greed for greed's sake. For obvious reasons, the greedy people (particularly right wingers)latched onto these rants as justification for their greedy behavior.
Ok, I'll bite.
Say you've got a great idea and a niche market to play that idea to. Unless you're already wealthy, you won't be building your own TV station. And you're not likely to find one to buy, since most are already owned by the big players.
But say you've got a station. You're now a local broadcaster. How can you expand beyond the local market? Cable probably isn't going to pick you up, since it's owned by the big media. Satellite isn't going to take you.
Pretty much, you either make something attractive enough to have your company bought by the big media, or you're doomed to a niche in a small market. Good luck getting any real ad money.
Your only chance to ever grow will be on the internet, by word of mouth (or of hyperlink, as the case may be). So forget TV and radio. If you have an idea, the internet is the only distribution channel that can possibly get your idea to a decent sized audience. Perhaps you can pull a CNN or a Fox on the internet. But you won't, with the current rules and market, create anything significant in television or radio.
.sigs are for post^Hers.