The negative impact of media consolidation is something that we have to deal with on a daily basis here in the High Country. Aisling Broadcasting owns nearly all of the radio stations in the area, and Jones Media owns darn near everything else on the print side of things.
As each entity seeks to cut costs, we suffer the consequences--irrelevant, canned, syndicated radio programming, and newspapers that serve as cheerleaders/megaphones for those in power--rarely questioning the status quo (the powerful folks can afford to buy ads, remember).
Yet media consolidation is all around us, too. Case in point: Media General, owner of the Winston-Salem Journal, the Hickory Daily Record, and many, many other media outlets. You see, Media General is losing money in the newspaper/TV business, and lots of it.
But wait--Media General may have a savior in the FCC. Turns out that Media General is one of the major forces behind the FCC's recent effort to allow even more media consolidation--in the form of radio/TV-newspaper cross-ownership, or what used to be called a monopoly by most folks.
Media General is pushing the FCC to allow them to buy up even more media outlets in a town--to the point where they would own the radio/TV station AND the newspaper--thereby controlling all of the traditional media outlets.
Media General's tactics have nothing to do with journalism, obviously. Their plan is to get the FCC to allow them to operate as a monopoly in as many towns as possible so that they can recoup the money they paid to accumulate all of these media outlets in the first place.
And journalism? Well, who cares if making money and true journalism are incompatible? We can always look forward to more coverage of the Hickory Crawdads--that's cheap!
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