Did You Know That Just 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America? [INFOGRAPHIC]
By W. E. Messamore | 06/18/2012 | News, Social Media | 11 CommentsThe following infographic was created by Jason at Frugal Dad to show that almost everything Americans read, watch, or listen to about news, politics, and public policy comes from news sources owned and operated by just six big companies. That’s a pretty big drop in the number of differently-owned news sources from 1983, when there were at least 50 companies that controlled most of the American media:
![did you know that just 6 corporations control 90 of the media in america infographic 46380 Did You Know That Just 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America? [INFOGRAPHIC]](http://ivn.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/did-you-know-that-just-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-infographic-46380.jpg?b50711 "Did You Know That Just 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America? [INFOGRAPHIC]")
As Business Insider notes about the infographic:
“This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn’t own AOL, so Huffington Post isn’t affiliated with them.
But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates ‘the illusion of choice,’ Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren’t owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year.”
Leave Your Comment →
11 Comments
Lance Brown
06.18.2012
This infographic is silly. Starting right from the top… “That same 90% is controlled by 6 companies in 2011″. What that fails to mention is that “that same 90%” has become vastly less influential and important in 2011. Newspapers, radio, TV…all of those have lost share of the market in a big way to the Internet. Where is Youtube here? What about Facebook, Twitter? Facebook’s “readership” is coming up on a billion; Twitter’s, ~1/2 billion. (5X and 3X the monthly readership of Time Warner, respectively.) I don’t know the stats on how much total YouTube video is watched every day, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s competitive with the amount of TV watched every day. And YouTube has only been in business for a fraction of the 60+ years that the TV industry has.
Also, consider the comparison made between Time Warner and Tumblr/Reddit/Digg/Google News…Time Warner properties have been building an audience for nearly 100 years; those other sources, 10 years or less. So in ~10 years, Tumblr, Reddit, and Digg have developed a combined readership nearly half that of Time Warner; Google News alone, a readership 1/3 that of Time Warner. That’s GOOD news, not bad. It’s AMAZING PROGRESS in the decentralization of media–not that you’d know it from this bleak and distorted picture of the landscape, which is based on an increasingly-irrelevant definition of “media”.
Seriously…an infographic about “media” that doesn’t even mention YouTube = irrelevant.
And what about blogs? There are literally millions of blogs, with hundreds of millions of readers every day. An infographic about media that doesn’t mention blogs is an infographic about the past, not the present.
Silly pro-regulation propaganda.
“Until regulations return (or they buy each other out of existence), they will continue to control 90% of everything Americans see, hear, or consider important.”
Bullshit. It’s already not true, and every year that passes will make it less true.
W. E. Messamore
06.18.2012
@W__E__Messamore
Great analysis, Lance. You’re right that this graphic would make better sense if described as a look at “mainstream” media in the United States versus independent media like blogs and websites like YouTube. But the trend the infographic describes is notable and possibly even worrying depending on your point of view. In some ways, it even emphasizes just how important all the independent sources of media that you listed in your comment are. If it weren’t for them, we would really be in trouble! I personally agree with you that regulation is not the answer (in fact, the best answer to this troubling situation has arisen on a totally unregulated medium, as you have pointed out). But even if I don’t care for the editorial position of the infographic, the information it shares and the issue that information highlights are too important, and the graphic shares them in too interesting a manner for me to have passed up posting this hear. I’m very glad it sparked a discussion and that your comments are here for more clarity.
Any other commentators have any thoughts on this?
Lance Brown
06.18.2012
W.E.,
I don’t discount that the infographic tells an interesting story about the centralization of old media, but I have a big problem with the fact that it explicitly claims to be the whole picture, when it so notably isn’t. The missing part of the picture–the fact that as soon as an unregulated competitive media playing field (the World Wide Web) came into existence, the stranglehold of the “big 6″ started to loosen, and now gets looser every single day–should be the real headline here. The Internet has all-but killed the newspaper industry, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at that infographic. A gazillion hours of citizen-produced media gets uploaded and downloaded every single day, but you wouldn’t know that either. Twitter and Youtube and other social media served as the crucial platform that allowed Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring to flourish as they did. Where is that in this infographic?
And if the distorted (and falsely grim) picture wasn’t bad enough, it’s clearly done with the intent of motivating increased “regulation”–when it was largely “regulation” that handed those giants their media empires. Aside from consumers themselves, the FCC is more responsible than any other single entity for the consolidation of mass media in the U.S., and the stifling of competition. In many cases, the consolidation was explicitly approved by the FCC, and competition was explicitly forbidden–by law. And FrugalDad wants to increase that kind of power, and painted a false picture of reality to try and drive sentiment toward that goal.
The truth is, the media–the real full thing–has never been more diverse and decentralized and citizen-driven, in all of human history. That’s a MUCH different story than what FrugalDad would have us believe.
Gable Bates
06.19.2012
And how much diversity of thought is there among those 6? If media control feels like a monopoly, it’s because it is in substance, if not on paper.
Abe Lopez
06.19.2012
time warner, disney, fox, clear channel and can’t think of the other 2
Aidan King
06.19.2012
The mainstream media is stupid too…
Stefan A. Schoellmann
06.19.2012
There will be error correction …
Kevin Driscoll
06.19.2012
Amos Cooper
06.19.2012
@adcooper12
It’s a little sad to see just how much corporate influence is in the news these days but it also demonstrates just how important independent media and the internet will become in the following years.
Scott Jones
06.19.2012
Thanks T, Follow and act often… http://www.savethenews.org/
halmonkey
07.12.2012
Not sure what Frugal Dad’s point is. Today we have far more choice than ever, with or without those 28 companies owned by 6 mega-corporations. Just a click away on Google, you’ll find 100s of genres of music, internet radio, sub genres, alternative news, independent news, BBC, Al Jazeera, Utne Reader, Mother Jones, Nation, far left, far right, libertarian, anarchy, socialist, communist, you name it, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Wikipedia, podcasts, alter net, Drudge, satellite radio, skate-punk emo cross-dresser hardcore ska from South America, 100s of niche cable TV channels, PBS, imports, classic movies, film noir, foreign film, cult movies, Sundance, social media, blogs, Jeezus, the list goes on and on.