Who feels large media Corps are getting TOO large?

[Sir Beregond]

I just don't like that everything in our lives as consumers will pretty much come from a few mega corps. Having competition is good. Getting to the point of monopolies and other such issues is how we get crony capitalism.

 

As for media, I left that train a long time ago. I neither own a TV or watch the "news".

Edited May 6, 2022 by Sir Beregond

[UltraMega]

3 hours ago, schuck6566 said:

It isn't so much about controlling how you watch it as controlling what's produced to watch or read. As for "you can just stream it" let's see, Disney owns at least 30% of HULU, NBCUniversal through Fandago purchased VUDU,along with having Peacock, ViacomCBS own PlutoTv, Amazon of course owns Amazon media(licensed & original movies,tv).  Remember that NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast. Poor Netflx is like "Why people want to jump me for a rate hike?"

"On February 25, 2020, Comcast announced it would purchase Xumo from the Panasonic/Viant joint venture for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of the service—which will continue to operate as an independent business, albeit within Comcast's cable television division—stems mainly from Xumo's partnerships with smart TV manufacturers (including LG, Panasonic, and Vizio), which would allow Comcast to use Xumo's placement to market or showcase Xfinity and other Comcast services as well as use its technology to develop additional streaming platforms. The company plans to add content from the NBCUniversal programming library and the company's various television networks as well as use it to upsell its free/subscription hybrid service Peacock, akin to ViacomCBS's utilization of Pluto TV to offer content from its cable networks following the former Viacom's purchase of the rival streamer in the Spring of 2019."

 

They control what we can see......

Viacom doesn't really do news so if your arguing that this leads to censorship, I don't think your example supports that. 

 

You're basically arguing that the small amount of large cable companies and media distributors leads to some kind of censorship. While I definitely agree that having fewer and larger companies is usually a bad thing, I don't think it's actually lead to any censorship in any meaningful way. 

 

A lot of these companies literally lay down cables and the government won't let very many companies do that for logistics reasons, but the gov regulates it so companies have to compete fairly and let smaller companies use the cables. 

 

I agree it's not ideal but I don't think it's causing the issues you assert that it does. 

[schuck6566]

On 06/05/2022 at 12:39, UltraMega said:

Viacom doesn't really do news so if your arguing that this leads to censorship, I don't think your example supports that. 

 

You're basically arguing that the small amount of large cable companies and media distributors leads to some kind of censorship. While I definitely agree that having fewer and larger companies is usually a bad thing, I don't think it's actually lead to any censorship in any meaningful way. 

 

A lot of these companies literally lay down cables and the government won't let very many companies do that for logistics reasons, but the gov regulates it so companies have to compete fairly and let smaller companies use the cables. 

 

I agree it's not ideal but I don't think it's causing the issues you assert that it does. 

That's a joke,Right? I mean I literally pay the cable company's fee's to the Govt's EVERY MONTH. They are allowed to pass those on to the consumer. They are ALSO allowed to pass on a "line usage fee" to the consumer for the rental of the poles to string the cable line.

911 Fee 0.75

Federal Cost Recovery Fee 0.02

Network Enhancement Fee 3.50
Federal Universal Service Fee 0.44

State Universal Service Fund 1.14

Cable companies use hidden fees to raise prices 24% a month

ARSTECHNICA.COM

---

Analysis of cable bills finds loads of fees not mentioned in advertised price.

 

[UltraMega]

On 06/05/2022 at 06:50, schuck6566 said:

They control what we can see......

To what end? Are you saying these companies are engaging in some kind of censorship or are you saying their content is overly homogenized? 

 

I think it's hard to argue any of these big companies are controlling what we watch when YouTube exists. They just want to make money by selling ads, they don't care what we watch and in the few instances where someone might try to use their media control to censor something, there are laws against that. They would get sued for unfair business practices immediately. 

[Sir Beregond]

6 hours ago, UltraMega said:

To what end? Are you saying these companies are engaging in some kind of censorship or are you saying their content is overly homogenized? 

 

I think it's hard to argue any of these big companies are controlling what we watch when YouTube exists. They just want to make money by selling ads, they don't care what we watch and in the few instances where someone might try to use their media control to censor something, there are laws against that. They would get sued for unfair business practices immediately. 

I would argue in the case of censoring that political decisions are often made in order to run a story or not because it might "put our side in a bad light", or that by overly sensationizing a headline for any given story a certain way (depending on who's running it), combined with how hyper-polarized both sides tend to be, it's rare to just be given facts to make an informed decision on vs "hey other side bad". All these media corps have agendas and in having said agendas, it influences how they communicate out information (or don't).

 

YouTube is functionally the same thing as differing sides create echo chambers for their own bases and get all the subscribers and publicity. But even the corps that control platforms like youtube have clear political biases and agendas as well.

 

It might not be outright "censorship" in the strictest definition you are using in terms of the law, but it's definitely something that majorly influences how the majority of people receive information, especially when you think lowest common denominator.

[UltraMega]

1 hour ago, Sir Beregond said:

I would argue in the case of censoring that political decisions are often made in order to run a story or not because it might "put our side in a bad light", or that by overly sensationizing a headline for any given story a certain way (depending on who's running it), combined with how hyper-polarized both sides tend to be, it's rare to just be given facts to make an informed decision on vs "hey other side bad". All these media corps have agendas and in having said agendas, it influences how they communicate out information (or don't).

 

YouTube is functionally the same thing as differing sides create echo chambers for their own bases and get all the subscribers and publicity. But even the corps that control platforms like youtube have clear political biases and agendas as well.

 

It might not be outright "censorship" in the strictest definition you are using in terms of the law, but it's definitely something that majorly influences how the majority of people receive information, especially when you think lowest common denominator.

I agree with that. The media definitely has problems, but even the problems you're describing IMO don't come from a lack of diversity but rather mostly the for profit nature of news reporting.