What’s Wrong with Brangelina?

Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles ($) Free Press, a media activist group that opposes loosening ownership rules for broadcast stations. As the Journal reports, the group has been wildly successful in its drive to block further consolidation in local markets, organizing thousands to protest and contact the government.

Free Press’s stated concerns are “diversity of viewpoints and coverage of local issues.” But no surprise, there’s more than a bit of media elitism at work, too.

“If you watch TV news, it’s all car crashes, shootings and Brangelina. If we can’t create more hard-hitting journalism, then we have a real problem,” says Mr. Silver, a political activist who says he decided to form the group after becoming mad one night when a local newscast led with a story about the rising price of lobster. Local ownership of stations or newspapers leads to more accountability to citizens and better journalism, he says.

But local ownership doesn’t necessarily equal diversity in content or viewpoints. Or serious local journalism.

A good example is my hometown’s public broadcaster, Philadelphia’s WHYY. Unlike big nasty media conglomerates, local public stations are closer to the community and do a better job covering local news, goes the argument.

So then why do I remember so many interminable Yanni concerts from my childhood?

A quick look at WHYY’s schedule shows that things haven’t changed much: The station airs just half an hour of locally-produced content each weekday. And that show, “Delaware Tonight,” doesn’t even focus on Philadelphia. Almost every other program on WHYY comes from PBS headquarters. (Meanwhile, the local FOX-owned station airs two hours of local news every night.)

This isn’t so unusual in the world of public television. If you want news, watch Jim Lehrer–if your PBS affiliate hasn’t replaced it with back-to-back eps of “Are You Being Served?”

And maybe the media behemoths aren’t so bad as Free Press makes them out to be. As Slate’s Jack Shafer explains, a Clear Channel takeover of six stations (previously owned by two companies) in Minot, ND, actually doubled the number of formats on the air:

Speaking before a Senate committee investigating media ownership, Clear Channel Chairman Mays said the Minot stations represented only three radio formats before the company made its acquisitions—country, adult contemporary, and news talk. Clear Channel diversified the mix by adding a classic rock, a hits, and an oldies station.

Shafer goes on to explain why this makes good sense:

Wherever a broadcaster consolidates ownership in a region, it will tend to diversify programming for economic reasons. Consider: If six companies own six stations in a small market, all six will tend to gun for the highest ratings possible and put the other stations out of business. Such a strategy will almost always result in duplication of formats, as was the original case in Minot. But when a single owner controls all six stations, there is no incentive to put the other stations out of business. He’s more likely to diversify his programming portfolio to reach the largest aggregate listenership, which is what mega-owners like Clear Channel aim for when they own multiple stations in a market.

The economic incentive to occupy as many strong programming niches as possible is so great that the scurvy bastards at Clear Channel even broadcast the liberal Air America network in about 17 markets.

But the economics of media ownership probably matters less than individuals’ visceral response to the media–why else would so many expend so much energy railing against the rhetorical excesses of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann? For most, opposition to media consolidation seems to have less to do with local journalism and viewpoint diversity than with indignation and self-affirming elitism.

Which may explain why so many of anti-conglomerate activists I’ve met seem to spend so much time on TMZ.com.

SHARE: 10 comments