Big Media Gets Bigger

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16941

 

Big Media Gets BiggerBill Moyers, Now with Bill Moyers

October 10, 2003

Big Media companies keep getting bigger -- with more and more power over our

lives. This week's deal between General Electric (GE) and Vivendi means that

GE'S NBC, which helped elect Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor of California, has

just picked up not only Universal Studios, but the USA, Trio and Sci-fi cable

channels, to go with CNBC and MSNBC, all now part of a $43 billion dollar

empire.

 

Then, there's radio. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity is out with a

new study showing that in each of 43 different cities a third of the radio

stations are owned by a single company. No company's supposed to own more than

eight in any market, but the media giants thumb their nose at the rules all the

time. In 34 of those 43 markets, one company owns more than eight stations.

 

The big daddy of all is Clear Channel Communications -- 1200 stations

altogether. In Mansfield, Ohio, Clear Channel owns eleven of the seventeen radio

stations in your town. In Corvallis, Oregon, over half of what people hear is

decided by Clear Channel -- seven of thirteen radio stations.

 

Cumulus Media is the second biggest radio empire. Cumulus, remember, banned the

Dixie Chicks. Cumulus owns eight of the fifteen radio stations in Albany,

Georgia.

 

It's a similar story in television. No single company is supposed to control

more than one television station per city, except in some big markets. But look

at what has happened in Wilmington, North Carolina, where there are three

network affiliate stations -- Fox, NBC and ABC. This year, the Fox station

changed hands. On paper, the new owner was Southeastern Media Holdings. But then

Southeastern Media announced that Raycom Media would help manage the company.

Raycom already owns the NBC station, so it combined the two news departments and

laid off much of the staff.

 

But hold on to your hat -- Raycom and Southeastern Media Holdings turn out to be

part of the same company. Now there's not only one less independent news

operation in Wilmington, there's also one less media company.

 

The flimflam-ery goes on. In 33 other cities, stations that are supposed to be

competitors have found clever ways to undermine the existing rules -- mergers

and takeovers, for example. Remember when Viacom married CBS and Rupert

Murdoch's News Corp ponied up for the television stations owned by Chris-Craft?

Those deals put both conglomerates in violation of the rule that no one company

can control stations that reach more than thirty five percent of the total

audience. But so what? The FCC just rolled over, winked, and gave both

conglomerates temporary waivers of the rule. A little time passed and this

summer the FCC raised the limit to give the big guys what they wanted, anyway.

But that giveaway brought protests from over two million citizens; they turned

the FCC into a beseiged Bastille on the Potomac. Such indignation from the grass

roots caused even the Senate to say, " Whoa, something's going on. People really

care about this issue. " And the Senate stopped the FCC in its tracks.

There are enough votes to do the same in the House. But then, General Electric,

owner of NBC; News Corp, owner of Fox; Viacom, owner of CBS; and Walt Disney,

owner of ABC, brought on the hired guns ... the lobbyists ... to wage a Trojan

War on Congress. A passel of former insiders moved through the revolving door,

rolodex in tow, trading their influence for cash -- top aides of the Senate

Majority Leader, the House Majority Whip and of John Ashcroft himself.

 

Now the most powerful Republican in Congress, Tom Delay, the House Majority

Leader, won't let a vote happen. The effort to reverse the FCC is dead in the

water, sinking the democratic process with it.

 

Bill Moyers is host of NOW with Bill Moyers, airing Fridays at 9pm ET on PBS.

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

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