My Mother Is A Fish

AlterNet: The Death of Local News
A Political Empire Made of TV Stations

What exactly are the regulations that enable the industry to consolidate, or as one editor Nichols puts it, be "regulated in the interests not of democracy or the people, but larger corporations"? Off the top of my head: giving licenses away to favored broadcasters, rather than having them be purchased at market prices, for one thing, no? And in the big picture, the power that the elites have to determine access to the political news by the broadcasters, surely limits diversity of opinion. What else can a free-marketeer say? Pretty little, apriori; too bad I'm not willing to research this more.

In the case of Sinclair and the broadcast that wasn't shown that amounted to anti-Kerry propaganda, it looks on first face like the market still does some heroic work in this arena, judging by the decline in stock market value and in advertising support that threatened the corporation.

Oh well. Just another useless blog, here.