5 Corporations control the MSM

[ixion]

they are part of the problem.

http://www.corporations.org/media/

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market.
In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

[rurallib]

1. surprise clear channel is not in there

maybe they are only US

[ixion]

2. this is talking about television broadcast media

clearchannel is primarily radio.

[cyberpj]

3. So I keep wondering... whatever happened to anti-monopoly laws? did they go out with de-regulation?

Was it the Glass/Siegel act people keep mentioning? Or is government just full out ignoring it now?

[ixion]

4. This is what OWS is about... corruption and collusion

of corporations and the government, and what we need to change, and why it won't be easy.

[FrenchieCat]

5. What happened was the telecommunications Act of 1996....

That's what happened.

[cyberpj]

6. Huh? I don't see what that has to do with banking and media monopolies :

http://transition.fcc.gov/telecom.html

[Tunkamerica]

7. There used to be limits on how much of the local media

one person or entity could own.

from wikipedia: Clear Channel Communications, especially since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, acquired many radio stations across the United States, and came to own more than 1,200 stations. However, the radio broadcasting industry in the United States and elsewhere can be regarded as oligopolistic regardless of the existence of such a player. Because radio stations are local in reach, each licensed a specific part of spectrum by the FCC in a specific local area, any local market is served by a limited number of stations. In most countries, this system of licensing makes many markets local oligopolies. The similar market structure exists for television broadcasting, cable systems and newspaper industries, all of which are characterized by the existence of large-scale owners. Concentration of ownership is often found in these industries.


and:

The Consumers Union also raises one other major point. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not foster competition among ILECs as the bill had hoped. Instead, of ILECs encroaching on each other, the opposite occurred - mergers. Before the 1996 Act was passed, the largest four ILECs owned less than half of all the lines in the country while five years later the largest four local telephone companies own about 85% of all the lines in the country.<24>

Robert Crandall has argued that the forced-access provisions of the 1996 Act have had little economic value, and the primary, sustainable competitive forces in phone and related, non-'radio', telecommunications are the wireline telephone companies, the cable companies, and the wireless companies.

The Act was claimed to foster competition. Instead, it continued the historic industry consolidation reducing the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996<25> and 6 in 2005.<26> An FCC study found that the Act had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States had increased.<27>

Consumer activist Ralph Nader argued the act was an example of corporate welfare spawned by political corruption, because it gave away to incumbent broadcasters valuable licenses for broadcasting digital signals on the public airwaves.<28><29> There was a requirement in the act that the FCC not auction off the public spectrum which the FCC itself valued at $11–$70 billion.