The “Big Six”
In North America, there used to be many different corporations which owned television networks, radio stations, internet service providers, film companies and distributors, newspaper and magazine publishers, and telecommunications companies. Now a mere six corporations own virtually everything. These “Big Six” companies … General Electric, Time Warner, Disney, NewsCorp, CBS and Viacom … these Big Six are truly multinational in scope and their other holdings include huge assets in airlines, real estate, weapons manufacturing, oil and other natural resources. Declared annual profits from the Big Six’s communications arms, when combined, exceed the Gross National Product of many African nations. Their political clout is overwhelming. When their interests are at odds with the editorial opinion of one of their media outlets the outcome isn’t hard to predict. Public broadcast outlets, long intended to be a counterbalance to the influence of private broadcasters, have been steadily eroding and adopting commercial strategies to compete for a dwindling audience share.
More information on The Big Six
More information on media ownership in Canada
Television is no ordinary industry. Although its market has become fragmented, people continue to tune in every day and every night. Television is still a “hot medium”. It has a profound effect on public opinion. It can be used to suppress dissent, sway political opinion, justify war, and cause people to focus on … or ignore … tragedies such as famine, disease, poverty, and even genocide. The failure of television journalism to accurately report on the launch of the Iraq War and the consequences this has had on the American people and their economy speaks volumes about television’s power to do good, or do otherwise.
While the Big Six concentrated their monopoly ownership, government bodies regulating the communications industry failed to act, looked the other way, and in some cases even colluded with the corporations they had been charged to oversee on behalf of the public.
Perhaps most troubling of all is a strategy to control not only television, movies and other communication forms, but our freedom of communication itself. Digital broadcast of television is no longer a theory, it is an inevitable fact. Television will eventually be disseminated by broadband Internet. Right now, The Big Six in the United States (and smaller media monopolies here in Canada) are vigorously lobbying to make the Internet pay-to-play … a “toll-road” model. They wish to “monetize” and control who has access to broadband, what you are allowed to access, what you can find using search engines, and even the content of any communication (including, recently, text messages) people are allowed to send each other.
These are some of the issues which network television is facing as it evolves before our very eyes. One prominent communications scholar says the industry is facing “a critical juncture”, a point where things will rapidly develop in one of a series of possible directions. What will the dictatorial, profit-obsessed environment of network television be like when it has a global footprint through its multinational owners? How will these issues affect society as a whole? How will this affect us as individuals? What are the implications for democracy?