THE BUSINESS OF MASS MEDIA

At some point in the book The Circle, the reader begins to realize that maybe it’s not such a good thing that the world’s biggest Internet company has gotten so big. The novel, a 2013 best-seller by Dave Eggers, tells the story of the Circle, the idealistic technology corporation headquartered in a vast, beautiful campus on the Pacific coast (not unlike the reality of so many other leading digital media companies). The corporation seems well intentioned: It wants to unify an individual’s online identities into one account, with one identity (no anonymous or fake identities), one password, and one payment system—and all data, social media, and transactions simplified into a single account.

With all communication made public, good things start happening. Comment sites become more civil as the anonymous rants of trolls evaporate. People around the world are held accountable as tiny wireless cameras stream live video feeds from everywhere. Human rights violations such as those in Egypt’s Tahrir Square? Everyone knows who the perpetrators are. Political dealings in smoke-filled rooms? Politicians are now more accountable, too, as they rise to the challenge to be fully “transparent” and wear a tiny camera that captures the work of all their waking hours. And, of course, advertisements become more focused because advertisers know more about each individual. People are encouraged to share comments, photos, and videos of everything they do, and to respond back with “smiles” or “frowns.” Biometric bracelets linked to the Circle create a running log of people’s exercise, diet, and health, helping catch any problems before they become serious. It is a technological utopia, whose existence is possible because of the dominance of the Circle in searching, e-mail, texting, and social media (subsuming Google, Facebook, and Twitter).

Yet a utopia in which everyone is encouraged to publicly share every bit of personal information is just a step away from a surveillance state where everyone is required to share, where the desire for privacy carries the social stigma of something to hide, where individuals become unable to control the information of their own lives, and where the lone dominant corporation becomes so big that it controls the flow of information—and perhaps everything else.

The fictional Circle sounds familiar. Google is an obvious comparison, but it also recalls the other major digital conglomerates—Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and others (perhaps Comcast and AT&T)—that would also like to become the dominant media corporation of our time. The question, How big should a media corporation be allowed to get? has long been a concern of media economics. Now, How deep into our lives should a media corporation be allowed to go? becomes an additional concern, as the digital mass media become so intimately enmeshed in our everyday lives.

THE MEDIA TAKEOVERS, MULTIPLE MERGERS, AND CORPORATE CONSOLIDATION over the last two decades have made our modern world very distinct from that of earlier generations—at least in economic terms. What’s at the heart of this “brave new media world” is a media landscape that has been forever altered by the emergence of the Internet and a changing of the guard, from traditional media giants like Comcast and Time Warner to new digital giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. As the Yahoo! and Netflix ventures demonstrate, the Internet is marked by shifting and unpredictable terrain. In usurping the classified ads of newspapers and altering distribution for music, movies, and TV programs, the Internet has forced almost all media businesses to rethink not only the content they provide but the entire economic structure within which our capitalist media system operates.

In this chapter, we examine the economic impact of business strategies on various media. We will:

As you read through this chapter, think about the different media you use on a daily basis. What media products or content did you consume over the past week? Do you know who owns them? How important is it to know this? Do you consume popular culture or read news from other countries? Why or why not? For more questions to help you understand the role of media economics in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.