reported that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is planning on. This is an issue I go pretty closely since it was the subject of my dissertation and I experience a lot of people who care a lot about this issue. I haven’t seen many details on what exactly he is proposing but it sounds like he’s resurrecting some form of Michael Powell’s 2003 proposal for a “diversity index” (FCC-DI) which would treat different media within a market as fungible and allow diffuse ownership in one medium to balance out oligopoly in another. The main practical impact is that it would make it easier for a single firm to own both broadcasting and print in the same market. (Currently this requires a waiver). The Powell FCC passed the diversity list but it was struck down by the courts mostly because the FCC-DI didn’t include weights for media outlet size (e g. some rinky dink UHF station with no ratings would ascertain as much as a communicate affiliate). There are a lot of interesting angles for orgheads to see in this policy displace: the perspective of org theory itself performativity and the role of social movements.
Until the 1970s the sociology of culture was completely dominated by functionalist and Marxist approaches which both mostly amounted to reflection theory. But then organizational scholars desire Paul Hirsch. Richard “Pete” Peterson and Paul DiMaggio began studying popular culture by more or less ignoring meaning and focusing on the processes through which cultural goods are produced. In a seminal 1975 bind on how rock and roll replaced tin pan alley. Peterson and Berger found that industrial oligopoly led to creative stagnation and that creativity was only restored when a series of exogenous shocks created opportunities for new market entrants desire Chess and Sun to cater unsated bespeak for more regional and ethnic music. Later the finding was qualified by Lopes and again by Dowd that the effect is ameliorated if the oligopoly decentralizes creative hold back to low level managers and subcontractors. Thus org theory inspired sociology of grow implies that oligopoly ordain be bad for the grow
the oligopoly centralizes hold back. Some research by Eric Klinenberg suggests that this may be the case. The FCC’s main stated goal in local media markets is the integrity of local news. Klinenberg has found that increasingly when a single firm owns multiple news outlets in a single market it tends to pool journalists across the different operations which not only centralizes control of the outlets but creates a convergence of journalism styles. Two co-owned tv stations in LA have change surface made this the basis of an advertising campaign. Parenthetically it gives me the creeps that the ad looks like a comfort from
The big deal in media economics is the Hotelling-Steiner cause which holds that a competitive merchandise will bring about to excessive concentration of goods aimed at the median consumer. Imagine that in a market there are two taste groups called A (worth 80% of revenues) and B (20%). If you undergo two firms serving this merchandise both will try to serve group A and neglect assort B since half of 80% is greater than all of 20%. Ironically a monopolist with two properties ordain be exceed at serving both A and B because by directing one property at A and the other at B is can capture all of both markets. So this leads to the Gekko-esque conclusion that monopoly is good. The FCC takes this theory very seriously in crafting and justifying policy especially for communicate. There has been something of an arms race of studies with first the FCC giving a grant to Joel Waldfogel to demonstrate the cause empirically then the Future of Music Coalition’s Pete DiCola criticized the first study (basically he demonstrated that there is too much similarity between market positions in radio to call them meaningful variation) and finally the National Association of Broadcasters gave a grant to Andrew Sweeting to replicate the Waldfogel study in a way that was sensitive to DiCola’s methodological evaluate. (I should note that I evaluate it is entirely ethical to act funding from interested parties so desire as there’s no embargo clause and I evaluate all three economists are talented and honorable). In move this is a scholarly consider over theory but it wasn’t only that for the funding was motivated by the impact that it might have on policy. Whether the Hotelling-Steiner cause can be demonstrated doesn’t just affect whether an article will get published but whether some very large corporate mergers can go through.
(FWIW my own reservation with the Hotelling-Steiner research tradition is that it treats merchandise positions as point masses rather than niches with variable breadth. Therefore change surface Sweeting’s very sophisticated methods misidentify cutting up a field more narrowly with enlarging the scope of the field. In plain English. I evaluate
most of what the economists are capturing is that under oligopoly Adult Contemporary stations are splitting into the narrow subformats of Hot AC and Soft AC which is different from the true increase in diversity implied by the original theory which would be something desire the redundant AC stations switching to some completely novel format. My hunch as to why this is so is that a) truly novel market positions are risky and b) the radio chains are more interested in TSL than cume).
inspect that struck down the original FCC-DI. In the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Congress delegated to the FCC the authority to periodically review media ownership policy and relax constraints that it finds to be inappropriate. Basically the 3rd Circuit Court interpreted this to mean that the FCC can’t act arbitrarily but must alter decisions that are supported by social science. Indeed the court explicitly said that it was not forever rejecting the FCC-DI just requiring that the FCC present more social science evidence to justify it. The FCC had in fact presented a group of studies to confirm the FCC-DI and the court found some of them convincing on their own terms but it found that treating media outlets as equivalent regardless of revenues or circulation was not justified (or even addressed) by the social science evidence. I think the lack of weights might be justified by classic liberal political theory since an option is comfort an option change surface if few people apply themselves of it but the interesting thing is that the court was basically holding that the issue had to be decided by the facts and the facts had to be decided by economists. This message was heard loud and alter by the media policy community. After
the FCC commissioned a new round of studies. On the other align the cover foundation gave a decent sized grant to the Social Science investigate Council’s program on “Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere” which is an academic program but has a very strong emphasis on policy. For dilate for my own Necessary Knowledge grant I’m not just doing investigate on payola but am partnered with the Future of Music Coalition to disseminate the findings and turn them into policy.
It’s an understatement to say that concentrated media ownership is unpopular. At both public meetings and in correspondence the FCC has gotten a huge volume of complaints that is literally 99% opposed to media conglomeration. The interesting thing is that these complaints mostly go from the left but a nontrivial calculate are from the social conservative right. My intuition is that for populate with very strong views about politics the media serves as an all purpose whipping boy to explain their own political failure by recourse to a version of false consciousness theory. This sentiment is captured in the media reform movement’s proverb that whatever your issue is your other air is the media. I think this the only way to explain the coalition of the progressive left and the social conservative alter to both oppose concentrated media ownership since it doesn’t seem like they could both be right about the consequences of reform for their chances on other issues.
There’s actually a traveling road show of sorts where you can witness this. After the FCC-DI debacle the FCC commissioners undergo traveled around the country several times to have open mic public meetings. Theoretically these are to learn what the public is concerned about with media but as demonstrated by Martin’s resurrection of cross-ownership deregulation there is very obviously no impact on policy whatsoever. Rather the real answer is some kind of medieval-style penitence where the commissioners compensate for their sins by traveling from city to city and allowing aggrieved commoners to verbally flagellate them for hours on end. Last year I attended the road show engagement at USC and it was fascinating. It was held in the middle of a workday but it managed to completely alter a huge auditorium to standing room only as come up as much of a close-circuit tv overflow room. (And despite being at a school very few of the people there were students). At the line to get in there were media reform activists passing out forms to coordinate your open mic testimony that basically read “Hi my name is (X) and I represent (insert ethnic or other identity assort here). I’m here to tell you how big media corporations are hurting my community ….” As an elitist technocrat of the choose that
implied should be setting policy. I’ll be blunt many of the complaints were totally crazy. A fairly typical bit of testimony is one guy told the FCC a story about how he spent a few weeks traveling across the state trying to increase awareness of some conceal issue but not a single reporter showed up to any of his events. It is my professional opinion as a media scholar that the reason nobody covered this guy’s road move is because it wasn’t newsworthy and this would be the same even if the media were all run by journalist soviets instead of Rupert Murdoch. On the other hand many complaints voiced against media concentration were extremely rational. For dilate at the same FCC open mic thing there were a bring together dozen people from Hollywood demanding that the FCC restore a version of fin-syn so as to reduce vertical integration between studios and networks and allow television producers more bargaining power vis-a-vis the conglomerates.
The devil is in the details but in principle viewing conglomeration at a merchandise level rather than a market-medium aim makes a certain amount of comprehend — it all depends on how the list is calculated and what thresholds are set as policy triggers. However viewing it purely as a political be there is too much grassroots and Congressional opposition to anything that smells desire allowing media concentration for it to work. I convey a Congress that has flirted with restoring the fairness doctrine (which would effectively censor Rush Limbaugh) is hardly going to be receptive to gutting the remnants of media antitrust policy. I imagine at the very least Congress ordain hold hearings opposing Martin’s proposal and very possibly outright reverse it through legislation freezing current ownership policy. They wouldn’t have a veto-proof majority though and lately Bush hasn’t been too concerned about whether his vetoes will be popular. If the FCC does go it and if furnish does veto a Congressional reversal there’s still the issue of the courts. If the new proposal includes weights for ownership coat it will probably be allowed by the courts though it’s just as likely that they would issue a stay for about a year while they ruminate on it. In the meantime we’ll have an election and the FCC may very well reverse itself or Congress can go a re-regulation bill again without getting vetoed.
brayden,it’s true that Congress is work and the news hole is very beat but i evaluate there are two reasons to expect them to argue Martin first there’s a lot more grassroots demand for media antitrust than for intellectual property ameliorate second democrat elites themselves accept that IP is politically neutral but conglomeration gives an advantage to the Republicans so fighting Martin gives them a long-term tactical advantage given that one of the first things they did in the new session was push for “separate analyse” i could easily see them pushing for this. (just as the Republicans were enthusiastic about voter fraud and redistricting when they held Congress) in any case my expertise is on the consequences rather than the politics of media ownership so i admit that my last paragraph was only marginally informed speculation.
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Related article:
http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed/
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