Media Consolidation and Narrowcasting

2.3 Media Consolidation

These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America

These media conglomerates control all TV, Radio, Film, Entertainment, etc. They decide what you see and when you see it. They control the market.

The market is diversified and they each want something difference. The news has become a selling point of entertainment via the creation of narrowcasting, the production of news content so that a consumer can only consume the news they "want" to hear.

What the video below on the political bias of the news and read the article below on Broadcasting to Narrowcasting.

Narrowcasting

2.4 Modern Media Spectrum

Media Content: From Broadcasting to Narrowcasting

The original “broadcast model” of media content production to mass audiences was a rational response to early mass media systems’ economic and physical resource scarcity. Under such constraints the best way to attract the largest portion of the audience share was to produce the programming with the broadest appeal. But a significant effect of the explosion of channels made available by digital networked communication technologies in the waning decades of the twentieth century has been to diffuse the audience for any particular media product, as discussed earlier. The result, which again was a rational response to changing market conditions, has been toward increasingly niche-oriented media content delivered over increasingly specialized channels (Owen and Wildman, 1992 Links to an external site.). This trend away from “broadcasting” and toward “narrowcasting” (see Massey, 2004 Links to an external site.) and its sociopolitical impacts has been discussed by several scholars (e.g., Bennett Links to an external site.(p. 797) and Iyengar, 2008; Mendelsohn and Nadeau, 1996 Links to an external site.; Prior, 2007 Links to an external site.; Ranney, 1990 Links to an external site.; Sunstein, 2001 Links to an external site., 2007 Links to an external site., 2009 Links to an external site.; Turow, 1997 Links to an external site.). Although the shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting is evident across several genres of media content, news provides a particularly interesting case study. In the heyday of traditional mass communication in the twentieth century, major media outlets, including the leading urban newspapers and television network news broadcasts, dominated the news audience share in most US media markets. For example, the audience for the three major network newscasts (ABC, CBS, and NBC) in the mid-twentieth century typically reached over seventy million Americans (Prior, 2007 Links to an external site.). That has changed dramatically, with only about a fifth of Americans now tuning in on an average weeknight (Rosensteil and Mitchell, 2011 Links to an external site.). Although data show steady declines in audiences for network news over the last thirty years, during which time the networks lost 55.5 percent of the share of viewership they once had, this does not mean that most people have abandoned news altogether. Instead, they appear to be gravitating to other news platforms (Rosensteil and Mitchell, 2011 Links to an external site.). The appearance of cable and satellite technologies in the 1980s and 1990s offered the first serious alternatives to broadcast network news, and both these and more recent digital networked communication technologies accelerated the decline in both television news viewership and print newspaper readership. Perhaps more importantly, however, the fracturing of audiences for traditional news outlets prompted product differentiation and experimentation with new forms of news,1 Links to an external site. including more partisan news outlets (Bae, 1999 Links to an external site., 2000 Links to an external site.; Iyengar and Hahn, 2009 Links to an external site.). Fox News is the most obvious example, and Iyengar and Hahn (2009) Links to an external site. argue that Fox News emerged in part by audience fragmentation resulting from channel proliferation in the 1990s. Mullainathan and Shleifer (2005) Links to an external site. further show that there is economic incentive for ideological specialization in news products, as audiences tend to prefer information that confirms their beliefs, and media organizations that respond to audience demand stand to reap greater profits. In other words, niche news is an effective competitive strategy in an increasingly crowded news marketplace. The rise of media channel proliferation and narrowcasting increased audience choice in media content and, consequently, audience members’ opportunities for selective exposure (Chaffee and Metzger, 2001 Links to an external site.; Iyengar and Hahn, 2009 Links to an external site.). Although niche media (e.g., radio, magazines) predate cable, satellite, and Internet media technologies, and while audience selectivity has been observed with traditional mass media content as well (see Sears and Freedman, 1967 Links to an external site. for a review), the appearance of partisan news affords greater opportunity for a particular type of audience selectivity—selective exposure to ideologically congenial news and public affairs information. Several scholars argue that this type of selectivity may significantly reduce citizens’ exposure to political difference (see, for example, Bennett and Iyengar, 2008 Links to an external site.; Sunstein, 2001 Links to an external site.). Also, while narrowcasting and increased consumer control over media exposure reduced the size of the available audience share for all types of programming, demand for mainstream news information, which used to provide an “information commons” or shared context for receiving public affairs information, has shrunk over the years, (p. 798) particularly among younger audiences (Bennett and Iyengar, 2008 Links to an external site.).2 Links to an external site. Even among politically interested citizens, niche media provide attractive alternatives to traditional news outlets, while facilitating politically uninterested audiences to tune out completely. Bennett and Iyengar (2008 Links to an external site., 707) consequently question whether the concept of mass media has been “made obsolete by audience fragmentation and isolation from the public sphere.” For many of the same reasons, Chaffee and Metzger (2001) Links to an external site. similarly wondered whether history will show that “mass media” was a purely a twentieth-century phenomenon.

Broadcasting versus Narrowcasting: Do Mass Media Exist in the Twenty-First Century?

Miriam J. Metzger

The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Links to an external site.

Edited by Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Discussion Question:

The concentration of ownership by the above six Media Giants enables them to not only control media but possibly create it. Narrowcasting enables viewers to consume only the news they want. What is the impact on American Politics and Democracy from these changes?

Each student is required to post a 200 word response to the question.

The student then must post at least a 100 word response to at lease two other student posts

Please review How to participate and answer a Discussion Question for specifics on how to post to this discussion to get full credit.