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Big Media and You

What's at Stake

The Federal Communications Commission is once again taking up the issue of media ownership and deciding how media ownership rules should be changed. As FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has warned: "They screwed it up once. Believe me, they're 100 percent capable of screwing it up again."

That's why it's crucial for the public to weigh in now. Here's what's at stake:

• Big Media stifle viewpoints: If a corporation like News Corp. can buy multiple media outlets in a single city or town, it gains immense influence over what information is available. Consolidated corporations strip local newsrooms of staff, while pushing aside competing points of view. That means less diversity of voices and a narrower range of debate.
• Big Media don't serve local communities: In exchange for their free and exclusive use of the public airwaves, broadcasters such as Sinclair are supposed to serve the public interest. Yet they frequently ignore important local issues, pander to sensationalism, provide biased coverage of elections, and stifle diverse viewpoints.
• Big Media ignore diversity: Corporate media conglomerates like Tribune Company are more concerned with profits than responsible programming. Coverage of issues important to people of color, the working class and rural citizens are squelched or ignored because these people aren't advertisers' target audiences.

Without ownership limits, giant national corporations can buy up local stations and newspapers, eliminate diverse, local and independent programming. If the FCC is serious about fostering localism and diversity, it must enact protections against consolidated corporate ownership.

For decades, the biggest media companies have had the ear of the FCC and Congress, while the public has been ignored. As the FCC rewrites is ownership rules and Congress debates legislation that will shape the entire media system for years to come, it's time our policymakers listened to the public, not just the corporate lobbyists.

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Costs of Consolidation

In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission attempted to loosen media ownership rules that would have unleashed a massive wave of corporate consolidation of radio, television and newspapers entities across the country.

The courts sent these rules back to the FCC for a rewrite. Now, as the FCC embarks upon writing new rules, the stakes are even higher:

• A handful of media companies dominate what you watch on television. As their influence spreads to other outlets, the diversity of what you see diminishes.

  Five media conglomerates — Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, News Corp. and NBC/GE — control the big four networks (70 percent of the primetime television market share), most cable channels, as well as vast holdings in radio, publishing, movie studios, music, Internet and other sectors. (To learn more, visit StopBigMedia.com's ownership charts)

  Minority ownership — a crucial source of diverse and varied viewpoints -- is at a 10-year low, down 14% since 1997. Today, only 1.9% of television stations are minority-owned.




• Media conglomerates now stand to make incredible new profits from the public airwaves with no accountability to the public interest.

  Over the next few years, television conglomerates will begin broadcasting digitally. This means that in the space it used to take to broadcast the local affiliate of ABC, NBC or CBS, these corporations will now be able to fit six or more stations — ABC-1, ABC-2, and so on. This opens up countless new revenue streams, and indeed, plans are already in the works to have infomercial-driven new channels pump up corporate profits.

  The total worth of the publicly owned airwaves that U.S. broadcasters utilize has been valued at $367 billion -- more than the GDP of many nations — but the public has never been paid a dime in return. Now, these conglomerates claim they can't afford to be accountable to the public interest.




• Media consolidation has stifled independent voices and threatened public access to information.

  Consolidation is killing local media choices. Since 1975, two-thirds of independent newspaper owners have disappeared, and one-third of independent television owners have vanished. Only 281 of the nation's 1,500 daily newspapers remain independently owned, and more than half of all U.S. markets are dominated by one paper.

  Moreover, the number of radio station owners has plummeted by 34 percent since 1996, when ownership rules were gutted. That year, the largest radio owners controlled fewer than 65 stations; today, radio giant Clear Channel alone owns more than 1,200.




• If the current ownership rules are eliminated, local communites will be turned into "company towns," where one media conglomerate dominates the public discourse.

  Big Media wants the FCC to lift the restrictions on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership and allow one company to own two or more television stations in a single market. If the rules are changed, the largest conglomerates will immediately begin swapping newspaper and television properties. Then the radio giants like Clear Channel will begin selling off their already consolidated radio holdings for billions to the other dominant companies, creating local and regional media fiefdoms.

  If FCC Chairman Kevin Martin tries to push through changes similar to those rejected in 2003, one company could potentially own the major daily newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same town. Once the digital television transition is completed in 2009 – allowing stations to broadcast multiple signals – one company could control 12 or even 18 television channels in a single city.