Domination fantasies: does Rupert Murdoch control the media? Does anyone?

Reason, Jan, 2004 by Ben Compaine

The Top 40 list in Philadelphia was rarely much different than the playlist in Denver. Precious little radio programming has truly been local other than the sports scores, traffic, weather, and perhaps some early Sunday morning interview. No matter who owns the local stations, it's unlikely that Clear Channel's Boston stations will be giving the Miami traffic report.

Like television, the radio business is changing rapidly. Here, it is satellite and the Internet that are driving progress. Satellite radio services, such as XM and Sirius, are providing new options, with dozens of commercial-free "stations" for those who are willing to pay $120 annually. And the Internet is a very robust option for anyone unsatisfied with what they get on the AM and FM dials. Services such as Real One Radio and Live365 offer thousands of radio options. Some are transmissions of over-the-air stations from around the world. In a 2001 study I co-authored, we found more than 2,500 stations listed at RealOneRadio.com. The most listened-to stations were those that were Web-based only.

Services such as Live365 provide the capability for anyone to put themselves "on the air" over the Internet for as little as $10 a month. And The Boston Globe recently reported that 100,000 listeners a day are using this nascent service. The consumer research firm Arbitron says that in August 2003, 50 million Americans viewed a video or listened to an audio stream on the Internet. "The idea that Rupert Murdoch's Fox media empire or Arthur Sulzberger's at The New Fork Times can overwhelm the voice of the people seems a little more absurd with each new broadband Internet subscription," concluded Globe technology columnist Hiawatha Bray.

Public Considerations

Publicly owned companies are frequently criticized for being too driven by quarterly earnings needs. It is a fair criticism. So it is again ironic that the poster child for the evils of media conglomerates, News Corp., is probably the least driven by short-term profits and quarterly earnings. Though the company is publicly owned, working control and ownership have been retained by its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, and his family. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into its groundbreaking efforts in creating the Fox Network, then a viable second all-news cable network, then creating direct broadcast satellite service covering parts of the Third World as well as developed countries that did not have the advantage of a multi-channel cable infrastructure. While in no way endorsing his apparent political ideology, one might even point to his bankrolling of the conservative Weekly Standard as another contribution Murdoch has made to the marketplace of ideas and cultural offerings.

Advocates for small, local, nonprofit media companies routinely ignore or discount the benefits of profit-driven public ownership. The stocks of these companies are widely held--by teachers' pension funds, by mutual funds, by individuals, and by 401(k) plans. The boards of these companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders. Most of them, most of the time, take that seriously. Restricting their coverage, their range of films or magazine tides or news shows, is not what the big companies are about. They simultaneously seek to reach the mass market when they can and niche markets when they spot them. Given the vast diversity of interests in a nation the size of the United States, there is potential profit in reaching the right wing as well as the left wing, in programming for Spanish speakers as well as English, in publishing books for escapism and for self-help, in investigative reporting that is critical of government as well as editorials that are supportive. And if the big guys don't provide it, some small publisher or producer will.