Posted 8:57 PM by Gene

Sighhhhhhhhhhh, Robert J. Samuelson (a writer for whom I have some respect) seems to have gone off the deep end regarding GENERAL JR. and his "reforms." As he insists on putting it:

In the past 30 years, media power has splintered dramatically; people have more choices than ever. Travel back to 1970. There were only three major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC); now, there’s a fourth (Fox). Then, there was virtually no cable TV; now, 68 percent of households have it. Then, FM radio was a backwater; now there are 5,892 FM stations, up from 2,196 in 1970. Then, there was only one national newspaper (The Wall Street Journal); now, there are two more (USA Today and The New York Times).

If you don’t like radio, you can listen to a Walkman or pop a CD in your car player; in 1970, people had only bulky stereo systems. The alternative to TV is the VCR (85 percent of households) or, increasingly, the DVD player. Then there’s the Internet: everything from foreign news sites to chess to pornography.

Point 1: In 1970 the three networks were more or less independently owned. Today three of the four are owned by companies in movies, which allows them to be captives of their sister studio operations; witness the Disney Network. And even in cable, all four networks' parents have substantial programming interests, so what they lose in one medium they'll gain in another. (Clever that he forgets the Little Two, UPN and the WB, which are also controlled by companies in the movie biz. Clever also that he forgets in the early fifties there were four networks.)

Point 2: In 1970 cable was still an experimental medium owned by mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. Today it's a huge industry essentially dominated on the hardware end (i.e., cable systems) by a cabal, and on the software end (i.e., cable channels) by a cabal (pun intended). And two companies (AOL and Cablevision) have sizable interests on both ends. Some diversity.

Point 3: In 1970 most radio stations were independently owned, and played a variety of formats. Today two companies dominate the medium, which is run solely for the benefit of big consumer-products firms, promoting national advertising at the expense of localism and diversity.

Point 4: Yes, there are three national newspapers. There are also far fewer locally-owned papers (it escapes the intrepid Dr. Samuelson that USA Okay is owned by Gannett, notorious bane of localism in news); the afternoon edition, once an industry staple, has practically vanished; and except for a few big markets competition is nonexistent. Also, per-capita newspaper readership has declined, meaning the surviving papers are that much more dominant.

Point 5: Pop a CD in your car player and it's most likely made by one of the Big Five, four of which are foreign-owned; there was far more competition (and American ownership) in the record business in 1970. (Let us not point out that America still had a consumer electronics industry back then; that's virtually vanished too.) The same with prerecorded VHS tapes (how quaint) and the DVD; these are dominated by the same companies already dominant in movies and television -- and three of them are in the Big Five. (And the most prominent of their content, theatrical movies, merely migrated from network television, where they got their first TV exposure and played to large audiences.) As to the Internet, an astonishing number of the biggest sites are Big Media's; very few (Yahoo!, for instance) sprung out of nowhere, and Yahoo! didn't want to be an outsider forever; it hired a Big Media CEO. (Neither did AOL when it merged with Time Warner. How soon we forgot all the talk of Internet-Big Media mergers.)

Point 6: Elsewhere in his rant Robert J. pouts, "Popular hostility toward big media stems partly from the growing competition (a.k.a. more 'choice'), which creates winners and losers—and losers complain." Problem is, when the NRA, NOW, the Christian Coalition and Consumers Union can all complain about the same thing, it says with big media -- WE ALL LOSE. (And Bob, if our current un-big media are such an unalloyed wonder, why the quotation marks around "'choice'"?)

I don't think Robert J. Samuelson is a knee-jerk conservative, but his twaddle is a classic example of how the Buttmans and the Armeys view monopoly; simply put, the bigger the monopoly, the better.