Completely sans clue. There isn't any media company within light years of a monopoly, and the consolidations won't change that at all.

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

"Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch--independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change.

It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks--CBS, ABC, NBC--wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations."

The F.C.C. are clearly betraying their mandate in favor of wealthy interest groups. Follow the media history -there are far fewer media owners, today, then there were 50 years ago.

I checked into this one a little bit.

Yes, the "monopoly" thing.

The analogy here, is kinda like, can insurance companies own banks, and can banks own real estate brokerages (at the same time they're making home loans), and that kinda thing.

It's like, can you be a content provider and an ISP at the same time?

Same kinda question when they wanna regulate Microsoft, right? 'Cause I mean, their software is "everywhere", and they have a "de-factor monopoly" by virtue of the fact that 3/4 of the "useful applications" out there on the market, are made for the PC.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

It seems to me, that "if left to its own devices", a company that's too big will eventually break up "on its own", either, you know at the behest of the stockholders or the Board of Directors or whatever.....

But the problem in this area, becomes when you get a company that's as big and powerful as a Microsoft, or say, as big as AT&T used to be, back in the Ma Bell days. And I mean, that's why Ma Bell got broken up, right? 'Cause they were into everything - phones, computers, software - and those were the "business units" they created afterwards, too.

This is a huge issue, because I mean, if you wanna talk about the "ownership" of the communications infrastructure, you know, right away we're into this whole issue of foreign traffic flowing through US switches, and that kinda thing, and I mean, in that context, a little domestic verticalization is probably no big deal, right?