In between your normal late-night T.V. shows is the dreaded 5 minutes of commercials you’ve become accustomed to. But have you ever thought about the show itself and how it could be slowly, and subtlety brainwashing you into believing certain things? Not only do the media conglomerates attempt to corrupt you while watching MTV, but these corporations own the local news channels you watch as well. As of 2006 there are only a few companies who own an overwhelming percentage of the media. These conglomerates have a major impact on various and important aspects on the average American’s way of life.
It wasn’t always like this, the founders of America had no way of knowing that any of the technology we have today was even possible. In the constitution they were only concerned about the freedom of speech, and the freedom of press. As technology advanced, more and more companies were starting their own newspapers, radio stations, and even TV stations. With the new idea of corporations and conglomerates, companies bought other companies, and the bigger ones merged together to start narrowing down the ownership of the media. In 1983 there was only 50 companies left who owned nearly all media in the United States. That was cut nearly in half by 1987 when there was 27 left. After the Time Warner and AOL merge in 2000, the new number was ten. This was also the biggest merge in media history. After the merge took place, the conglomerate was worth a whopping $350 billion, which is over 1000 times larger than 1983 when the largest merge was $340 million. (Bagdikian xx-xxi)
Today, with the internet at full bore as a form of media for the public, the top conglomerates have changed. According to Mother Jones, an independently owned magazine company who claims “smart, fearless journalism”, there are now eight media giants from which the majority of the population gets their information. These companies are: Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, General Electric (NBC), News Corporation, and the new internet conglomerates, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Many people don’t realize the extent from which these companies affect them. The truth is that every one of these giants owns, or is affiliated with, something you either watch or use often. To get a sense of the massive size of these multi-billion dollar corporations, Disney not only owns the Disney station, but ABC, ESPN, and Miramax films. Time Warner owns AOL, Cable Television, Netscape internet service, Time Magazine, CNN, HBO and DC Comics. Viacom has MTV, Comedy Central, and Infinity Broadcasting. General Electric owns NBC, and Universal Pictures. News Corporation owns MySpace.com, 20th Century Fox, TV Guide, and the commanding share of DirectTV. Yahoo has yahoo.com, GeoCities, and Flikr. Microsoft owns MSN, Bungie and Lionhead Studios (major gaming developers). Finally Google owns google.com and youtube. Although just that list alone covers much of the media, the list is just a small sample of the companies owned by those eight. According to Robert McChesney, who has been writing books on Mass Media for more than a decade, has a few different companies on his list. On that list is Vivendi Universal, the owner of Universal Music Studio and its subordinates, which distributes 22% of the world’s music and Sony, who owns another sizable chunk of the music industry. Another notable company is Bertelsmann, who owns Random House publishing company. McChesney has described media ownership in tiers, the first tier being the top few who own the majority of the media, the second tier are another dozen or so who act like the first tier, but don’t quite make the revenue tier one does. These two tiers own nearly all movies, TV shows, TV stations, cable systems, cable channels, TV networks, books, magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio stations, and music
The obvious and immediate effect in Vertical Integration is the nearly infinite advertising benefits. Vertical Integration is what all these media giants have; many different companies branching off underneath one main company, a hierarchy with one common owner. This problem is summed up very well by McChesney:
The pressure to become a conglomerate is also due to something perhaps even more profound than the need for vertical integration. It was and is stimulated by the desire to increase market power by cross-promoting and cross-selling media properties or “brands” across numerous, different sectors of the media that are not linked in the manner suggested by vertical integration. … “When you make a movie for an average cost of $10 million and then cross promote and sell it off of magazines, books, products, television shows out of your own company,” Viacom’s Redstone said, “the profit potential is enormous.”
Every major media conglomerate is doing this. It can be as simple as seeing a commercial for a Disney Channel show on ABC, or it can be complicated and intricately wired throughout the hierarchy. Robert McChesney, who was interviewed for the Merchants of Cool video, claims that everything on MTV is a commercial. The media has become not just a form of information and news, but it is slowly transforming into an advertisement. The amount of commercials has increased by 1999, instead of only several minutes an hour of advertisements, it rose to an average of 16 minutes. (McChesney 54) Many advertisements aren’t focused on adults, but children. Children are naturally more naïve and far easier to manipulate than adults. Children are also spending much more time in front of the television and on the internet than ever before. Companies are promoting items to a young audience because they know a child doesn’t like to settle for a different brand once they’ve made up their mind. If a product is considered cheap to a child, even if it has the same quality as the name brand product, they don’t want it. One study revealed that eight-year-olds when shown two pairs of identical shoes, one Nike, the other a K-mart brand, and asked which shoe they preferred, the majority of eight-year-olds had no preference. However, when asking the same question to a twelve-year-old, the twelve-year-olds would only want the Nike shoes. This is a prime example of the impact advertising has on adolescents.
Adolescents spend a lot of time and money trying to be “cool.” Advertisers know this, and capitalize off of it. “Merchants of Cool” is a public video displaying how many companies cross advertise and sell their products through the television. Much of this program focused on MTV and how it is all a big advertisement. Douglas Rushkoff, who narrates the program, throws important ideas out there for the viewer. One major topic he talks about is the feedback loop. The feedback loop is essentially mainstream media, primarily MTV/ Viacom, controls what cool is. Teens watch MTV and think that whatever is on it is what “cool” is. On the other side of the loop, MTV must listen to teenagers and find out what they like so they can keep the teen viewers watching the channel and buying into the products they are trying to sell. Even when some teenagers believe they are being non-conformists and start to rebel against the media, the media just plays right back on that making non-conformity cool. This has countless examples, but an especially popular one was Limp Bizkit in the late 1990’s. (Rushkoff) They provided head-banging rock about various controversial topics, and sung about hating the media, but they became famous on MTV, owned by Viacom, and were signed by Flip Records, owned by Universal. Even this week (April 13-19, 2008), if you check the Top 100 Billboards and look at the top ten songs in the country every one of those artists are signed by a major media conglomerate. More than half of those artists are signed by subsidiaries of Sony.
The next major influence from the media giants comes in politics. This unfortunate truth nearly shatters the idea of Democracy. The media can choose not to focus on one aspect of a politician and instead focus all its attention to a different one. This can influence the average American so much that before the time comes for election, the race has already been decided. A perfect example of this is Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader, a five-time presidential candidate, has a history of speaking out against media conglomeration. As a result, in the 2000 presidential elections, he was not allowed to attend three mainstream presidential debates. Which essentially turned them into boring programs, which lowered viewers to keep them uneducated, and made sure the topic of conglomerates was not brought up, a win-win for the media. (McChesney 59) That topic is also very closely related to the problem regarding the news.
Viewers are being entertained every night, but not informed. Journalistic standards have declined over the past decade to the point of near elementary reading levels. News stations have the choice to include or reject certain information to be reported to the public. With the help of clever diction and repetition, small, unimportant segments can be blow far out of proportion. A recent example of this is the news comparing Barack Obama’s below par bowling skills to his ability to run as a president. A more serious example is the difference in news coverage between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and their business records being portrayed by the news. Bill Clinton’s Whitewater deal was blow far out of proportion and was a major factor in his impeachment trials. George Bush on the other hand has a history of business failures and financial support towards him from donors only wanting to get close to the Bush family. These failures and questionable practices went virtually unreported by the news. (McChesney)
Some people are lulled into the belief that if they watch the local news stations they’re exempt from the short-comings of the nation-wide news programs. This, unfortunately, is far from the truth. Here, in Buffalo, New York, our local news is owned by, or at least affiliated with, larger conglomerates. Channel 2 (WGRZ-TV) is owned by Gannett Company, classified as a tier two conglomerate by McChesney. Gannett, not only owns news stations from many other cities, but it owns various news papers such as the USA Today. Other local news channels in WNY are affected by media conglomerates as well; Channel 4 (WIVB-TV) is affiliated with CBS Broadcasting and Channel 7 (WKBW-TV) is affiliated with ABC.
With
the current extent of how much of the means of information these companies own,
it’s no wonder why many are complaining about the decreasing intelligence of
the public. The television we watch, and the news papers we read have been
conditioned to make us believe what they want us to believe. Media companies know
there are very few ways to get around them, to get un-edited news from
independent sources, and they take the full advantage of it. Much of the public
doesn’t know the extent of these corporations, and even if they do, they don’t
make much of an attempt to change their ways, or to avoid being conditioned. The extent of the few major media conglomerates
has yet to be seen. Many professionals, McChesney
among them, believe that in the next decade we will see even more mergers,
bigger than anything in history, will narrow the playing field even further.
Clifnotes: there are none; you're on an internet forum. That's what you do on forums: READ AND WRITE.
