Voices of the People

Steve Yelvington has a good post wondering why so much of the media blogosphere is up in arms about the FCC's decision loosening the rules on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership in media markets. (He doesn't cite any of the media blogs complaining about media concentration, but you know who you are!)

Yelvington says:

It seems to me a case of fighting the last war. Local television franchises are rapidly losing their luster, and today are little more than a "must carry" opening to cable distribution. Audiences are fractured. The sun is setting on both broadcast networks and local affiliates. Newspaper companies that might have gone on a rapacious acquisition binge a decade ago are now just trying to keep the wolf from getting through their own doors. And, of course, the Internet makes anyone and everyone a publisher.

That's exactly right. And while the knee-jerk reaction of many journalism-business pundits and participants is to rail against big chains and media consolidation, that really does represent an outmoded worldview. It's especially ironic for bloggers to complain about media concentration when blogs are precisely the reason that we now have more voices in any given marketplace than ever.

Let's go back in time a bit—a couple of decades is all you need—and remember when most major markets had a newspaper or two, three or four TV stations, a handful of radio stations doing news, some suburban weeklies--and that's about it. Talk about media concentration! Now any given market has hundreds and hundreds of local news and information choices, with thousands (millions) more from distant markets a click away online.

There's a "bigness is evil" mentality at work here that I think is simply outdated. Big may be bad (I'd question that, but never mind), but the media landscape has become so incredibly fragmented that we've got more diversity of thought and voices than ever. Those voices are increasingly grabbing pieces of the local ad pie, as well.

This is why, when we inevitably see the death of a big-city newspaper within a few years, the hole left in the local media will be much easier to fill than anyone can imagine. Blogs, local sites, community papers, Yahoo Groups, services like Yelp and Craigslist—all of these will pick up the slack and provide as much local coverage, if not more, than the deceased paper did.

This is a golden age of media, with a flourishing of multiple voices. Fretting about whether the struggling local newspaper also owns the fourth-rated local TV station is just missing the point.

Comments

[Rocky]

You're absolutely right Mark. More and more of the media I consume is not from the major media outlets. I watch podcasts and read stories that would never see the light of day in traditional media.

Consolidation may actually help keep local voices that would otherwise die, if you can distribute some of the high fixed costs of news gathering and distribution in the traditional local media.

With Tivo and the networks going straight to consumer, the local distribution channels are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I barely know what channel is what. I just go to the menu on my DVR and watch the programs I want.

When I'm traveling, I go to the network Web sites to watch programming. I don't even know the alphabet soup of local Web sites.