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MEDIA: Gobble, Gobble
Why media consolidation threatens democracy
In addition to being editor of Business New Haven, Michael C. Bingham teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University and communications at Albertus Magnus College.
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Business New Haven
11/15/1999
By: Michael C. Bingham
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If the media landscape of the past ten years can be summed up in one word - conglomeration - then the outlook for the decade to come can be summarized in just two: accelerated conglomeration.
Think of it: Just a generation ago, the majority of media companies, large and small, in Connecticut were family businesses. Now, with just a handful of exceptions (the Meriden Record-Journal, radio station WATR in Waterbury and a few others) are owned by, directly or through intermediaries, by giant, out-of-state conglomerates.
Two companies, essentially, own nearly every newspaper in the state: the voracious Journal-Register Co. of Trenton, N.J., whose flagship is the much-loved (not!) New Haven Register, and the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror, parent of the Hartford Courant. Just this year, the former gobbled up Connecticut magazine while the latter, improbably, took over the Advocate newspaper chain after its divorced owners decided they could no longer stand the sight of each other.
Moreover, the number of daily newspapers continues to shrink. In September the Naugatuck Daily News was finally bought by its larger rival, the Waterbury Republican-American, which promptly shut it down as a daily, following the fine example of the Milford Citizen's' fate when the New Haven Register bought it earlier this decade.
What does this mean for advertisers? Easy. As choices diminish, prices invariably rise. This of course is a fundamental rule of economics, the gross abuse of which 100 years ago spurred the first great wave of U.S. antitrust legislation.
Trouble is, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, radio broadcasters were prohibited from own more than one AM and one FM station in a single market - or seven stations in all. Now, the sky's the limit. Texas-based Clear Channel, which has gutted WELI-AM, WKCI-FM and WAVZ locally - will soon have amassed more than 800 radio stations, 19 TV stations and nearly half a million outdoor displays nationwide. And its appetite is unsated.
As bad as this is for advertisers, it's worse for plain old consumers. By means of the First Amendment, the framers of Constitution created a shelter for the press from government interference and mandated that the American press would be under private, not public, control. And they envisioned a lively, feisty multitude of media voices to help the citizens of a new nation learning self-government to sort the wheat from the chaff. More voices, more ideas - and more freedom.
That multiplicity is disappearing at a rate that leaves even media veterans breathless. It would be swell if readers who decided that the Register did a crappy job covering education had somewhere else to turn. But they don't. More to the point, the days are gone when you could run into the publisher of the paper, the owner of the radio or TV station, and give him what-for if you were displeased with something they published or broadcast. Can't stand the Reg? Phone the guy responsible: Mr. Robert M. Jelenic of the Journal Register Co. in Trenton, N.J. He'll be delighted to hear from you. When pigs fly.
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Given this dire litany, is there any reason those of us who depend on the media - that is, all of us - shouldn't go out and shoot ourselves right now? I can think of only one: technology.
The proliferation of the Internet has made everyone in the world with a PC a potential publisher, broadcaster, direct-mailer, what have you.
In the new world everyone can have a global voice via the Web; the trick becomes how to capture eyeballs. It also stretches the notion of what a "journalist" is to include just about anyone who says he is. Ten years ago, no one would have considered Matt Drudge (who broke the Monica Lewinsky story on the Net) a "journalist"; today he's got an audience of millions who click onto his ever-changing mix of politics, celebrity and scandal with their morning coffee.
There's still hope the U.S. media can reclaim its promise as the private, independent watchdog of democracy. But to do so, for starters, it's going to require a lot more dogs.
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