It has to be more than 5, Hearst, Cablevision, Comcast, Adelphia, Liberty, RSN, Conde Nast, Hachette Fillipachi, and Primedia all own newspapers, magazines, and news channels that are not owned in any way by the other 4 already mentioned. Not to mention the New York Daily News and NY Times are still indepedent aren't they?

I think you guys are a bit off on the 5 thing (not that I worked in media for 20 years or anything )


and here's the link from CNN Money:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/19/news...ion=2007021914

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1 other: Universal/NBC

so much for 5

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http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_...00010000000001

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I think it's Sony that you're missing there, Juan.

NBC/Universal falls under the GE umbrella.

I'll see if I can't form a better breakdown for later in this thread.

I wasn't being all statistically exact when I said about 5 companies control all the media of course, but I've worked in broadcasting and film on the talent and production side since shortly after the laws were changed to allow media outlets to merge and acquire at a rapid pace and it has sucked the creativity out of your movies, TV, newspapers and local radio like you can't imagine.

Gresch- your list of cable companies there is pretty moot because they don't do a whole heck of a lot of news gathering or news breaking or providing programming past community bulletin boards. They're mostly re-reading what they get from the Associated Press and local stations on their news stations.

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JV

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just ain't so

The cable companies still get to decide what they do/don't report on, and if they want to spin it.

That being said, Conde Nast, Hearst, PRIMEDIA, Hachette Fillipachi, the NYTimes and the NYDailynews are all still indepdent. That's a pretty big list of movers and shakers in the media/publishing business.

SONY doesn't own any media outlets such as TV or print as far as I know. Uni/NBC is owned by GE, but GE wasn't on your or juan's list


I'm out, off to London for a week.... have a good one.

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You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

For another side of the media monopoly debate, here's an interesting article from Reason magazine I had bookmarked years ago:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/29001.html

This article from the Center for Digital Democracy cites the 'cabal theory' Juan and I were referring to:

For all of the clamor over the Internet and various other digital technologies, the old media--print publications, recordings, broadcasting, and film--still have their virtues. They're readily available, easy to use, and generally affordable. It's not without reason that we use such terms as mass media and popular culture, after all: these are the sources of news and entertainment that most people want, most of the time, and they're firmly embedded in a $450 billion industry.[1]

What the old media are not, however, is participatory. We may read newspapers and magazines, listen to radio and recordings, or watch film and television, but the odds of any of us actually contributing to the mass media (beyond forking over $25 for a book, $18 for a CD, or $8 for a movie ticket, that is) are small. The mass media industries tend to be closed systems, dominated by a relative handful of interlocking giants, with room at the margins for alternative expression, perhaps, but with the vast majority of writers, recording artists, and other independent voices all but excluded from the critical advantage of mainstream distribution.

Ben Bagdikian has been chronicling the diminishing number and growing power of media conglomerates for years, declaring most recently that the 50 companies that dominated the mass media in 1983 had been reduced, through mergers and acquisitions, to a mere 5 two decades later: Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation, Disney, and Bertelsmann. While Bagdikian's free-market critics complain that the Big Five's holdings (which include four major movie studios, some 60 cable channels, five broadcast TV networks, a satellite TV operation, a thousand or so radio and TV stations, and an enormous portion of the publishing industry) fall far short of a genuine "media monopoly," they conveniently overlook the rampant consolidation that afflicts all forms of media: 5 record labels control 75 percent of all recordings sold; 6 cable companies control 85 percent of the cable TV market; and the four major TV networks own 90 percent of the top 50 cable channels. And while it's true that there is "something for everyone" in the media marketplace today, homogeneity is the rule rather than the exception (which explains why public radio and television, as well as classical and jazz recordings, are all relegated to the far margins of the mainstream media, with ratings and sales that hover around 3 percent each).
http://www.democraticmedia.org/ddc/nms.php

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JV

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just ain't so

Have fun in the (lack of) sun, Ron! Look up Bozo while you're over there!

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JV

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know...it's what we know for sure that just ain't so

so with this merger i'm trying to figure out if I should get the lifetime subscription. I figure that prices would rise with little competition so paying $500 maybe a steal if the combined company decides to honor all lifetime subscriptions.

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Clear channel owns tons of radio stations, who owns clear channel?