Monopoly media

A threat to us all

In these conspiracy-minded times, one of the biggest bogeymen is The Media. Imagine an elite cabal, silencing all competition, controlling more and more of what you see. How else could you explain the Spice Girls?

But paranoia, in this case, is wise. There is every reason to worry about the future of the nation.

The media play a more powerful role with every passing decade. This issue of the Phoenix, for example, marks television's 50th birthday. When television first flickered to life, it was an odd experiment; now the average American spends 16 hours every week in front of the tube.

And everybody has heard the stories of corporate mergers, of the huge media agglomerations that grow larger by the day, buying out more and more of the competition.

But these familiar abstractions -- the media's increasing power, and the concentration of that power -- hurt the community in concrete ways.

Consider Boston. The city's largest paper, the Boston Globe, is now owned by the $2.1 billion New York Times Company. More than 100 community newspapers in Greater Boston and on Cape Cod are owned by Community Newspaper Company, a division of Fidelity Investments, the largest mutual fund company in the world.

The major television stations are all owned by big outsiders. Both Channel 5 and Channel 7 were once owned by community groups. Now they are owned by the Hearst Corporation (Channel 5) and the Sunbeam chain (Channel 7). Channel 4 is run by Westinghouse/CBS.

Radio is even more depressing. As Dan Kennedy explained in the Phoenix ("Sound and Fury," News, November 14), the landmark 1996 Telecommunications Act, which Congress promised would "foster competition," has had the exact opposite effect. Big chains may now own up to eight stations in a market, and there are no longer any national limits. In Boston, 16 of the top 20 stations are owned by four massive conglomerates: Westinghouse/CBS, Chancellor, Greater Media, and American Radio Systems -- itself soon to be swallowed by Westinghouse/CBS.

As chains triumph, so does sameness. In radio, the strategy has been simple: a conglomerate buys out a local station and then stacks it up with nationally syndicated programming; play lists are set at corporate headquarters. The same dynamic plays out in other arenas. When community papers are bought up, they are almost inevitably dumbed down -- if not consciously, then by downsizing local staffs. This is surest path to profitability. Even "local" TV news has an Anytown feel. The stories are local, but the formula -- blow-dried anchors reporting on mayhem, sports, and weather -- is the same everywhere.

The most pernicious part is that it's hard to know what one is missing. Profit-driven media masters usually scrimp on complex, difficult-to-report stories. Who will be left to explain what has been ignored?

Richard Norton Smith, biographer of the infamous Chicago Tribune publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick, described the trend beautifully for the Wall Street Journal: "Editors hoping to reverse their declining fortunes seek to duplicate the compressed blandness of USA Today, assured by focus groups that news consumers who have scant time to read have even less interest in being intellectually or politically challenged. The result is Holiday Inn journalism, recalling in style and substance the sad definition of middle age as that period in life when everyone you meet reminds you of someone you already know."

Some see hope in technology: perhaps new means of distribution (such as the Internet) will make entrepreneurial challenges possible. But recent history has been shaped more by an economic force: the rise of info-entertainment interests that control not only substantial portions of one medium (say, film), but also have major holdings across the board -- cable, book publishing, magazines. These blocs wield power in such innovative ways that they challenge the traditional definition of monopoly -- the ability to set prices. For as they grow (and join with one another), they are able to set cultural agendas, to control the contours of content.

Faced with this -- one of the greatest (and most complicated) challenges of the information age -- the federal government has so far failed. The Telecommunications Act was an abdication that has only made the situation worse. So now, with television celebrating its first half-century, we are threatened with a "vast wasteland" writ large: more and more selections, fewer and fewer choices.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.