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Who is Summer Redstone?
KEY POINTS
» Understanding media requires understanding the nature of media ownership.
» We cannot fully grasp media content without first grasping the institutional nature of the industry that produces it – especially the logic of corporate enterprise that flows from the top and demands that programming, whether light entertainment or breaking news coverage, makes as much money as possible.
» The U.S. media system is a three-tier structure dominated at the top level by a small number of commercial media giants.
» The media industry break down this way: the top tier is occupied by a handful of global mediaconglomerates
(Viacom, Vivendi, Disney, AOL-Time Warner, SONY, Newscorporation); the second tier by a larger, but still select,grouping of cable companies (e.g.Comcast) and newspaper chains (e.g.New York Times); the bottom tier by a much larger grouping of hundreds of thousands of companies that fill local niche markets by doing the less profitable work the first and second-tier companies have little interest in.» The key to understanding this structure – to understanding the very nature of the media industry and the government policies that have created it – is to understand that in reality the industry is dominates and shaped by the economic power of a few top-tier conglomerates, even though on paper there are hundreds of thousands of media companies.
» As the FCC considers relaxing restrictions on mergers, the potential exists for power to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
» Media consolidation and conglomeration result when the big companies buy up the smaller companies to expand market share, maximize profits, and eliminate competition.
» It is in the interest of big media companies to expand their empires, to gobble up other companies and grow as big as possible, because it allows for what the industry calls "synergy": the ability of a conglomerate to cross-promote, cross-produce, and cross-advertise its content across a variety of its own channels and stores and businesses.
» This ability to dominate and saturate huge swaths of the airwaves and public space creates both the conditions and the need for the blockbuster: because conglomerates are so massive, they need the massive profits that only blockbuster films can deliver; and because they own so many TV channels, movie screens, video stores, fast-food restaurants and other ways to promote and distribute films, they minimize their risk when investing the massive amounts of money required to produce and promote blockbuster films.
» This guaranteed cultural penetration in turn drives smaller media outlets out of the market.
» The recent rise to dominance of these top-tier media giants is not simply the natural end-result of healthy market competition, but of the desire to eliminate healthy competition.
» Government policies that deregulated the industry and allowed companies to merge in previously illegal ways, new technologies that have facilitated the merging of different media segments, and the basic logic – rather than the myth –of capitalism have combined to transform the industry.
» The myth of capitalism is that it is based on competition, and assuring competition. The corporate culture we have today is based not on competition, but on smashing and eliminating competition.
The distinction is crucial when the corporations in question are those who own the public airwaves, and therefore the main sources of information in a democracy.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION & WRITING
1.
What are the key distinctions between the companies represented on each of the three tiers of the media industry described by McChesney?2.
How does McChesney respond to the claim by many in the media industry that in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there are hundreds of thousands of different media outlets?3.
According to McChesney, what is media conglomeration and consolidation? And why is media consolidation desirable for corporations?4.
What’s meant in the video by "synergy"? What are the four elements McChesney describes that make it work?5.
Can you give some contemporary examples of synergy in action?6.
How do blockbuster films fit into the corporate dynamics of synergy?7.
How does McChesney respond to the argument that capitalism – and therefore the deregulation of markets– is based on an ideal of competition and entrepreneurship?8.
In your opinion, do the airwaves present an especially important case when it comes to assuring competition and diversity? If so, on what grounds? If not, why not?9.
What support do you see in commercial media content – in coverage of news or other kinds of programming– for McChesney’s claim that "the logic of corporate enterprise" that "flows from the top" shapes what ends upgetting produced, how it gets produced, and what doesn’t get produced?ASSIGNMENTS
The following exercises can work as individual or group projects.
1.
Go to the Media Ownership Chart featured on the website of The Nation magazine, www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html. The chart lists the ten largest media conglomerates and their holdings. Click on each oneto see the details up close. Also see the media ownership breakdown provided on the website for the PBS Frontline documentary "Merchantsof Cool" (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/).After reading through this information, choose one mega-parent company to focus on. Here’s your task:You are asked by Robert McChesney to devise your own plan to sell the Media Education Foundation video
Rich Media,Poor Democracy by taking advantage of "synergy." There’s only one requirement: achieve total market saturation. Write up this plan, and explain how and why it will work.2.
Prepare to represent one side in a debate on the following proposition:"Our present media system reveals that corporate power can be a threat to the American way of life: to democracy and free speech, but also – ironically – to the capitalist ideals of competition, free enterprise and entrepreneurship."
Be sure to back up your position with a clear summary of how the media system is presently structured. Provide clear definitions of what you mean by "capitalism,""free speech,""democracy,""competition,""free enterprise," and "entrepreneurship." Be sure to support your argument with specific examples from the video and other sources, and to account for the best opposition arguments to strengthen your own case.
Sources:
See Mark Crispin Miller on media ownership:
www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020107&s=miller
See Thom Hartmann on Thomas Jefferson’s fight against monopoly and corporate power:
www.thomhartmann.com/jefferson.shtml ee the corporate website of Clear Channel Radio for criticisms of government regulation of "free enterprise," including the CEO’s statement that proposed FCC regulation is "unconstitutional":www.clearchannel.comSee the FCC website for statements by Commissioner Michael Powell and others about the "free market" asthe best safeguard against corruption of democracy and the public interest:www.fcc.govWHO IS SUMNER REDSTONE?