Who's Afraid of Media Consolidation?

Brian Doherty | November 26, 2002

Matt Welch, who has skewered phony laments about the dire state of American media for Reason, alerts us to an excellent article in Japan Today that questions the dominant thesis that giant media megacorporations are merging us into a bland, tightly controlled, homogenous world media environment. The article's author, Benjamin Compaine, co-author of Who Owns the Media? Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry, states that "Much of the debate on media structure is too black-and-white. A merger of Time Inc with Warner Communications and then with America Online dominates headlines, but the incremental growth of smaller companies from the bottom does not. Breakups and divestitures do not generally receive front-page treatment, nor do the arrival and rapid growth of new players or the shrinkage of once influential players."

He goes on to provide plenty of specific facts and more detailed analyses to flesh out this thesis. The upshot: media options and opportunities continue to grow, big companies both grow and shrink, a lot of feared consolidation is nothing more than a game of media hot potato among big corporations, and we are not falling from the grace of a mythical media Eden. The whole article is worth reading.