What concentrated media?
: I’ve long taken the contrarian stand to Larry Lessig et al on big, bad media consolidation (I’ve said it’s not that consolidated and I don’t want government deciding who can say what in our free press and media).
Now I’m happy to see that I’m contrary but not alone. Reason gives us Ben Compaine, author of Who Owns The Media?, calling the members of the he-man-media-haters club just what they are: wrong.
Yet the FCC has research, technology, and economics on its side, while its critics rely on emotion, utopian visions, and anecdotes….
The first problem with the anti-FCC activists is that their basic premise is false. The media industry is not, as a matter of fact, highly concentrated. Moreover, it has not become substantially more concentrated during the last decade or so, despite repeated warnings to the contrary. Most important, there is no compelling evidence that the current level of media concentration has had negative consequences for consumers, culture, or democracy….
Overall, the media industry — including broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, music labels, cable networks, film and television producers, Internet-based information providers, and so on — is not substantially more concentrated than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Even after a period of mild deregulation and high-profile mergers, the top 10 U.S. media companies own only a slightly bigger piece of the overall media pie than the top 10 of two decades ago….
Right now, the 50 largest media companies account for little more of total U.S. media revenue than they did in 1986….
When it comes to the proposed FCC changes or questions about the effects of supposed media concentration, there
