Media Hegemonies
Who remembers turning on the television after school to watch Pokemon on YTV? Do your younger siblings tune in on Treehouse? Is 102.1 The Edge on your car radio? How many of your childhood books are published by Kids Can Press?
I bet you’re wondering what all these have in common, as they all seem different in their content. YTV, Treehouse, 102.1 The Edge, Kids Can Press, and a list of 69 other popular brands of media service providers are all owned by media giant Corus Entertainment.
I bet you’re wondering what all these have in common, as they all seem different in their content. YTV, Treehouse, 102.1 The Edge, Kids Can Press, and a list of 69 other popular brands of media service providers are all owned by media giant Corus Entertainment. This conglomerate of many media organizations is one of the few that run much of Canada’s media sector. This type of ownership is called cross media ownership, where a company of a particular medium owns another similar company of a different type of communication (Fiji). With the money and ability to buy up smaller media firms, the larger firms reduce competition and increase revenue, which repeats the cycle of buy and dominate. In the past several decades, the world is seeing more such merges, where larger firms eat up smaller ones, resulting in a smaller number of much larger firms dominating the media industry (McChesney, p. 2). Now, these media giants are going international to further increase their property.
Sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it: only ten or less companies feeding you and your entire country of billions of people what they want.
Much controversy has occurred over this topic, such as the reduction of diversity within viewpoints. The Federal Communications Commission, in a research, deemed in a cross media ownership as “unrealistic to expect true diversity from a commonly-owned ... combination” (Pritchard, p. 2). The commission also feared that the owner of such cross media ownership would manipulate news and content broadcasted by its media properties to negatively influence public opinion (Pritchard, p. 2).
It seems logical: each person has their own opinion and view that might be similar to a few others. Companies - media related or not - are still run by groups of individuals, and being individuals, they will have an opinion that will inevitably leak through the channels to thousands of people. With less companies portraying different outlooks, we will be forced to take what they feed us. Watching, reading or listening to the same opinions and views everyday are bound influence the masses. If everyone has similar tastes, then making entertainment that majority will like will definitely be easier and more profitable - killing two birds with one stone, or twice as many people with one movie. So watch out, the media giants might be out to homogenize us (McChesney, p. 3)!
The research by the FCC, mentioned above, was performed during the 2000 United States Presidential election as a chance to see how these merged companies would influence the public. The goal was to see if all the newspaper and television service owned by a single company would endorse or influence voters towards or against a certain candidate. However, the results of the research has deemed that despite having the same owner. Each organization had different endorsements without [possibly] influence from ownership(Pritchard, p.12).
Concluding from the FCC’s research, the media conglomerates aren’t out to brainwash us. Don’t breathe a sigh of relieve though! The FCC paper did state possibilities of influence that they were unable to determine solidly. Even so, presidential elections do not earn the media giants as much money as your newspaper and television subscriptions and movie tickets. All these companies (non-media related companies too) have one goal: and no, not to provide you with great entertainment, but providing a great entertainment so you will spend - and therefore give them... MONEY! If getting everyone to watch one movie or television show was possible... Heck! Imagine how much money they would save on production costs by creating one instead of twenty movies to satisfy all of us! It sounds like a great money mountain of a plan to me... if I was a media firm’s (slightly evil?) CEO.
BUT.. being the nice person I am, I'll just remove all the bloody gore in the media in an attempt to make the world a nicer place(Rehumanize...). Use what power you have and do good stuff with it! =)
BUT.. being the nice person I am, I'll just remove all the bloody gore in the media in an attempt to make the world a nicer place(Rehumanize...). Use what power you have and do good stuff with it! =)
Works Cited
Corus Entertainment Inc. About Corus. Corus Entertainment. 2009. <http://www.corusent.com/home/Corporate/AboutCorus/tabid/1668/Default.aspx> 8, October 2009.
Fiji Government. “Government Policy on Cross-Media Ownership.” Fiji Government Online Portal. 14, September 2005. <http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_5408.shtml> 8, October 2009.
McChesney, Robert. “The New Global Media.” The Nation. 11, November 1999.<http://www.thenation.com/doc/19991129/mcchesney/2> 8, October 2009.
Pritchard, David. Viewpoint Diversity in Cross-Ownership Newspapers and Television Stations: A Study of News Coverage of the 2000 Presidential Campaign. Federal Communications Commission. September 2002. <http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/materials/already-released/viewpoint090002.pdf> 8, October 2009. PDF file.
