Has anyone heard or read about the FCC's recent proposal to consolidate print and broadcast media? There really hasn't been much information about the new proposal; however, the most recent consolidations were in 1996 and 2003 and diminished the number of corporate owners of media distributors in the nation.

Diminished corporate media ownership sounds nice, but it suggests that more of the information that we receive and upon which we depend for informed democratic decisions is being channeled through the same few owners.

Would this significantly affect the variety of viewpoints that we currently receive through these broadcast news stations? How would this affect, positively and negatively, the information that we receive through the print media? The chair of the FCC claims that the pending consolidation is necessary to assist with the printed media's financial woes.

I suppose a lot of these questions are moot until we know more of what the FCC's intentions are this time around, but here's some information and opinions regarding the prior consolidations:

Quote :

"TELEVISION FACT: Viacom owns CBS; General Electric owns NBC; Disney owns ABC; and News Corporation owns Fox Broadcasting Company. ABC's corporate parent is the Walt Disney Company. Disney owns 10 television stations, 50 radio stations, ESPN, A&E, the History Channel, Discover magazine, Hyperion publishing, Touchstone Pictures, and Miramax Film Corp. Viacom owns 39 television stations, 184 radio stations, The Movie Channel, BET, Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, VH1, Simon & Schuster publishing, Scribner, and Paramount Pictures. General Electric owns 13 television stations, CNBC, MSNBC, and Bravo. News Corp. owns 26 television stations, FX, Fox News Channel, TV Guide, the Weekly Standard, New York Post, DirecTV, the publisher HarperCollins, film production company Twentieth Century Fox and the social networking website MySpace. Currently, six major companies control most of the media in our country. The FCC could decide to relax media ownership rules, which would allow further consolidation and put decisions about what kinds of programming and news Americans receive in even fewer hands. FACT: Since 1995, the number of companies owning commercial TV stations declined by 40 percent. If the FCC votes to relax media ownership limits, it could further erode diversity of ownership at the local level and increase the influence of large media conglomerates. In 2003, the regulations restricting a broadcast company from owning stations that reach beyond 35% of American households were loosened to 39%. CABLE FACT: Three media giants own all of the cable news networks. Comcast and AOL Time Warner serve 40 percent of cable households. Many proponents of deregulation site the expanded numbers of cable stations to argue that media sources are more diverse than they once were. The reality is that -- while there may be more stations -- they are still controlled by a small number of media companies. FACT: Cable TV rates have jumped 40 percent since the Telecom Act of 1996. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was, in part, meant to increase competition in the cable industry. The Act was heavily influenced by industry lobbyists and has had the opposite effect. RADIO FACT: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted ownership limits for radio stations, leading to incredible consolidation of radio station ownership. One company alone, Clear Channel Inc., now owns nearly 1,200 radio stations across the country. Before the change, a company could not own more than 40 stations nationwide. Several large stations owned by Clear Channel briefly banned the music of the Dixie Chicks because of their critical comments about President George W. Bush. Stations owned by Infinity have also banned certain musicians based on their political views. INTERNET FACT: Major corporations, including AOL Time Warner, the New York Times, CNN, ABC News and USA Today dominate the top Internet news sites. EFFECT on DEMOCRACY FACT: The public owns the airwaves and the FCC grants licenses to broadcasters with the understanding they will serve the public interest. To their corporate owners, media outlets do not exist to promote the public interest; they exist to make profits. But media companies don't manufacture widgets; they provide information. And information from diverse, competitive, and independent sources is vitally important to the health of a democracy. FACT: The nation’s largest broadcast companies that will benefit from looser ownership standards have given more than $13.3 million in political contributions to federal candidates and national parties since 1995. These same media giants have spent more than $68 million lobbying Washington since 1999. With their political clout, media giants have the ability to make their case heard at the FCC, the White House and Capitol Hill. The concerns of average citizens do not get the same attention from key policymakers. FACT: The FCC is in the process of making important decisions that will have a significant impact on our democracy. This appointed body is doing so without distributing the proposed regulations for public review and without allowing for adequate public review and comment. "It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC." --U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1969 case of Red Lion v. FCC"

http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=2127045

[Edited on November 18, 2007 at 5:20 PM. Reason : b]

11/18/2007 5:05:39 PM

i hate clear channel too

11/18/2007 9:43:28 PM

I blame Bush Clinton.

11/18/2007 10:40:58 PM

Clinton, Congress, Reed Hundt, and every subsequent chair of the FCC are at fault.

It's all been downhill since the Fairness Doctrine anyways...

11/18/2007 11:29:43 PM

Right, at a time when we have more TV networks than ever, more 24-hour news networks than ever, and the friggin' internet, you are worried about RDN merging with TBN? Please.

Consolidation enables content providers to save money thanks to economies of scale, which means more content at a lower price. Depending on how you measure it, media is far less consolidated today than ever. Back in the day the average person had access to three networks and a local paper or two, very few people had access to anything else. Today we have several times that number just of 24-hour news networks (if you have an ATSC OTA receiver you will know what I mean). Not to mention the flurry of print media. In Raleigh alone you can get numerous national papers delivered to your door in addition to our own local papers.

So, let anyone buy anything they want. It will reduce costs and reduce duplication of work. If it ever does become a problem we can deal with it then. But I doubt it ever will, consumers tend to be fickle, willing to drop any mega-media company (think CNN) for "The New" (Think FoxNews)at the drop of a hat.

[Edited on November 19, 2007 at 12:45 AM. Reason : .,.]

11/19/2007 12:41:40 AM

^ It makes economic sense, but as the gatekeepers of our information on politics and the world, we are taking a dangerous turn towards the total subversion of a functioning democracy by allowing media to continue to consolidate. By allowing for profit corporate interests to determine what is newsworthy, they control the policy agendas in our government.

Media coverage is the biggest determinant of issue importance in America's popular consciousness. People do not do research on policy. Policy is heavily influenced by media coverage, and guess who that favors? Their corporate ownership. If CNN was owned by Exxon, you can be sure you would not see a single story about global warming. The economics of maximizing shareholder returns deems that an organization is not going to report stories that is detrimental to their own economic interests. Thus the public good (an informed citizenry) is subjugated for the concentrated benefit of a few. This is alarming, especially as media should act in a capacity to provide accountability to government.

Media can also determine who they will allow into political debates. Theres Republican debates and Democratic debates. And then the general debates, in which third party candidates have been systematically excluded. Thus a private company has determined which views will be heard, which candidates you will pick from, what issues will be discussed. Its anti-Democratic and anti American.

11/19/2007 11:55:04 AM

Speaking of Economies of scale; maybe the federal gov't should just grab the rains and be the sole provider of media to the American people. This will be great for efficiency. Media can then be given out kinda like electricity.

11/19/2007 12:41:01 PM

^ A serious question though: hasn't it always been that for profit corporate interests have controlled the media and dictated what is newsworthy? The networks and mainstream newspapers have always determined which headlines get promoted since Hearst and the "splendid little war." I'm not saying that this is the ideal and would rather have news outlets be nonprofit, but this isn't exactly a new concept or scenario.

11/19/2007 12:41:43 PM

yes you are right. I am just glad the Hearst era is over. I will agree that I would whether have a few corporate leaders in charge of the media instead of a gov't ran one.

11/19/2007 12:53:22 PM

But Scuba Steve, they are not gatekeepers. No one gave them any keys to the secret vault of information. Any dumbass with a cellphone camera could get the story in a spreadable format.

You need to look at information as if it was a product. Lots of money has been made selling global warming stories to news consumers. If Exxon owned CNN then you are probably right that CNN might not report that story, but that would just grant its competitors a monopoly on both global warming stories and stories about CNN and its self sensorship. So, while CNN is peddling yesterday's news, FoxNews is sensational, controversial, entertaining, all thanks to a present from CNN. As such, this is why even today News organizations report on their own company's bad news: not doing so will not kill the story as their competitors are racing to sensationalize the misfortune of others; but it will lose customers by failing to out sensationalize the competition on any given subject.

No one would ever accuse a free-press of sensationalizing what is really important. But equally no one would ever accuse a free-press of failing to sensationalize sensational stories. And CNN attempting to underplay its own misfortune is nothing if not sensational news.

Quote :

"yes you are right. I am just glad the Hearst era is over"

Who said it was over? Who do you think it was that sold the Iraq War to the American People? Daft Bush?

[Edited on November 19, 2007 at 2:01 PM. Reason : ,.,]

11/19/2007 2:01:12 PM

Quote :

"But Scuba Steve, they are not gatekeepers. No one gave them any keys to the secret vault of information. Any dumbass with a cellphone camera could get the story in a spreadable format. "

you say that, but less and less people are actually on the scene. there are less reporters and more venues repeating the same AP story as gospel.

11/19/2007 2:09:53 PM

Exactly. If all anyone does is copy the AP then what is wrong with consolidation? Does it really help to have three town newspapers with all of them copying the same AP stories?

But don't remember that the AP has its competitors. All of which would piss their pants at the opportunity to report self sensorship or overt bias in their competitors.

11/19/2007 3:50:59 PM

If my quick Wikipedia served me correctly, then the Associated Press is hardly some monolithic organization hovering over the American news-scape but simply a pool of articles shared by newspapers. There's also other groups like Reuters, AFP, and Bloomberg plus the myriad of of national news wire services ranging from the Canadian wire service to Xinhua and ITAR-TASS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_service

11/20/2007 10:05:02 AM

I don't know why anyone would fear media consolidation when we have stories like this around

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/14/regan.lawsuit/index.html

11/20/2007 11:29:48 AM

Quote :

"i hate clear channel too"

Weren't they responsible for making 106.1 WRDU going from classic rock to old country?

Bastards.

The thing I hate about media consolidation is we hear less viewpoints and I always get the impression that we are being pushed in a certain direction. That is why if I hear overt right-wing or overt left-wing bias, I change channels.

Another problem I have is that our opinions may be shaped by foreigners toward their view with consolidation. The one reason I do not watch Fox News, it is ran and micromanaged in regards to views by an Australian native and his wife who is a Chinese native. Is it in the interests of the United States population to have foreigners guiding our opinions on national issues? Rupert Murdoch owns a significant part of the journalism in Australia and Britain, among other countries. He has also openly boasted about changing the result of a British general election with one of his British newspapers' headlines so that the candidate he supported won. Do we want an Australian manipulating our opinions like the following?



I just don't want an Australian and a Chinese to have that type of influence here.

[Edited on November 20, 2007 at 2:02 PM. Reason : /]

11/20/2007 1:49:46 PM

They only have as much influence as you give them. As such, I find it very unlikely he turned an election; far more likely is that he simply told the people what they were already thinking and they acted.

11/20/2007 2:08:07 PM

^ It's not the job of media to tell us what we're thinking. It's the job of the media to tell us what's going on in the world, and then I can make up my own damn mind of what I think about it.

And the Sun did brag that they won the election for the Tories and John Major. The next day headline was "It's the Sun Wot Won It". Conservative MPs state in their story that the Sun did indeed win it.

Whether they did or not is open for historians, but the newspaper's purpose was to make people come to their biased viewpoint, not to tell us what was going on in the election campaign, but to ensure that they provided coverage of the election that painted Major in a good light and Kinnock in a bad light so they could get the result that Sun owner Rupert Murdoch wanted.

By the way, Rupert Murdoch is friendly with Hillary Clinton. Guess which Democratic candidate has had the most favorable Fox News coverage?

[Edited on November 20, 2007 at 2:34 PM. Reason : /]

11/20/2007 2:27:18 PM

the Free Market will look out for the interests of the consumer because Free Enterprise always has the long-term interests of the customers at heart. Consumers will reject those businesses who pollute or engage in unfair price fixing and will support the rise of new competitors to take the place of corrupt organizations. Furthermore, blah blah blurgle blurgle deedle deedle whoop whoop whoop hubba hubba woo woo.

11/20/2007 3:08:10 PM