TheMastersNemesis (5,774 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028159830
Hillary's First Move - Break Up The MSM And Enforce Anti Trust Act.
If we don't break up the media the hate against hlllary will be be worse than it has been under Obama. The media is now a national security risk.
Star Member still_one (45,662 posts)
7. The media needs to be broken up, but not because of the hate against Hillary, but because
the mass media mergers have essentially created a monopoly, where a few corporate media outlets control the flow of news and information, especially since there is no equal time requirement or fairness doctrine
Even just broadcasting/cable/satellite is nowhere close to a monopoly, or even an oligopoly, even if you ignore outlets like Food Channel, HGTV, etc., whose focus is outside of news/opinion. There are ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, just off the top of my head, and I don't know how many second-tier outlets like Salem Entertainment (who has divisions for religion, news/commentary, and business). These all own stations, create content, and provide content to stations owned by outfits like Cumulus.
Cumulus is just one of many companies that own/operate groups of stations, either regionally or nationally. And then there's syndicators like Premiere Networks, WestWood One (Stephanie Miller), or DGital Media (Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann (per Hartmann's site)).
Broadcasting, at least, is probably as far or farther from being an oligopoly as it was when Carter was President. DU-folks' problem is that they aren't considering ownership,
as anti-trust laws do. They are looking at their highly skewed view of content (if it isn't Lib/Prog talking points and narratives, it's "right-wing") and at marketplace presence. Well, guess what? ConservaTalk does dominate the talk radio marketplace. It's because ConservaTalk gets listeners. Err America tried to market ProgTalk, and it failed,
because it was rejected by potential listeners. As I illustrated above, there is no lack of ProgTalk shows available through major syndicators, but radio stations (who are "accountable" to their listeners) aren't running Ed, Thom, or Stephanie as much as they do Rush, Sean, Savage, or Levin.
The SF Bay Area (where I live) has no lack of Lib/Prog people, and Err America failed here! For some reason, DU-member "still_one" didn't mention that fact in his/her rant about Bay Area radio. Libs & Progs are a large part of the potential audience in the Bay Area, but they chose not to listen to Err America (KQKE, 960). Maybe they listened instead to thumpa-wumpa "music". Maybe they listened to their iPods (hugely popular at the time). Maybe Err America was insufficiently insane, and they listened to the loony soap opera of Pacifica Radio's KPFA. Maybe they watched TV instead.
The point is, Err America's ProgTalk was easily available,but it was rejected by Bay Area Libs & Progs.
A perfect example is the San Francisco Bay area. There used to be a good variety of voices from all view points heard. That is now predominately filled with a conservative agenda. The cumulus broadcasting takeover of KGO was the final straw.
Mehhhh, "still_one" overstates a bit, and leaves out some important details. Yes, most of KGO's hosts were laid off in late 2011, including the conservative host Bill Wattenberg. However, the liberal Ronn Owens still hosts his very long-running morning show. Owens is reliably liberal, though probably insufficiently insane for "still_one's" tastes. What "still_one" didn't mention is that Cumulus moved many of its Lib/Prog hosts to another Cumulus station, KKSF (910). KGO has not done well, as a whole, and KKSF was recently changed to broadcasting ESPN's Spanish content.
The former Err America station, KQKE, tried to continue with ProgTalk after Err America bit the dust, but still didn't garner a decent audience. It was changed, for a time, to ConservaTalk, and more recently switched to business news and talk from Bloomberg Radio.