Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Imagine a situation in a major Western country, of 35 million people, where the leading national newspaper is owned by the same company that owns the leading national TV news network and also, incidentally, owns the most significant telecommunications infrastructure in the country.

In Canada, this is precisely what we already have. Bell Canada Enterprises’ subsidiary Bell Globemedia owns The Globe & Mail newspaper, the CTV television network, a number of high traffic web properties including Sympatico.ca, Globeandmail.com and Globetechnology.com, and, of course, the vast majority of the pipes through which their content is shoved.

In fact, the situation is even more pronounced than this.

As The Economist noted in April 2001: "A recent flurry of acquisitions and mergers means that in English-speaking Canada all but one of the main newspapers now belong to a television or telecoms giant, while in Quebec both of the province’s two private television networks are in the hands of Quebecor, a newspaper and printing firm."

There are still checks and balances in place that, in theory, ensure that the radio stations we wake up to, the TV news programs we watch and the newspapers we read aren't all controlled by the same company.

And Canada also has something the US significantly lacks - a strong, federally-funded national broadcast network in the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC). Plus, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has a federal mandate to oversee ownership of media, regulate for fair competition and strive to preserve diversity of ownership.

Even so, worries about the potential perils of convergence and the narrowing range of voices have spawned considerable interest in who owns what, as well as a number of high profile news stories in recent months.

Want an example of why this is bad? Last year, CanWest Global - the second largest converged media conglomorate in Canada - introduced a national editorial policy across 14 major regional newspapers. All papers were mandated to run the same primary editorial, written at HQ in Winnipeg and, of course, angled to reflect the views of management.

This is an unregulated and probably unregulatable side effect of convergence that is clearly an attack on editorial diversity.

Leonard Asper, CEO of CanWest, crowed about his converged empire a couple of years ago, saying:

"In the future, journalists will wake up, write a story for the web, write a column, take their cameras, cover an event and do a report for TV and file a video clip for the web..."

Doesn't sound too threatening, does it? Seems perfectly sensible and kind of funky, in fact - in an exciting go-faster-striped, converged always on kind of idealised way.

But here's the kicker, in the very next sentence he said:

"What we have acquired is a quantum leap in the product we offer advertisers and a massive, creative, content generation machine."

Ay, there's the rub. It's not a news vehicle, it's a "product we offer advertisers".

That's the only POV from which massive, unregulated media convergence makes any kind of sense. Kiss goodbye to diversity of opinions, to variety of voice, to unfettered debate.

It's all bollocks.

I thought all the media had already merged, they ain't on the web so I don't pay attention to them much, save the local fish wrap.

Alittle more seriously, I can understand and agree with your thought David. But on another level I think "Cool, go for it! Get bigger, easier target, remember those Dinosaurs got big too, where they today?"

"...concentration of media is bad for the democracy the the Congress..."

"(Lafayette Hotel)
Neo: Whoa, deja vu.

Trinity: What did you just say?

Neo: Nothing, I just had a little deja vu.

Trinity: What did you see?

Cypher: What happened?

Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.

Trinity: How much like it, was it the same cat?

Neo: Might have been, I'm not sure.

Morpheus: Switch, Apoc.

Neo: What is it?

Trinity: Deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something."

Some folks are looking for truth in all the wrong places.

"Come away with me Lucile in my merry Oldsmobile
Down the road of life we’ll fly automo-bubbling you and I.
To the church we’ll swiftly steal, then our wedding bells will peal,
You can go as far you like with me, In my merry Oldsmobile."

Sell out early and beat the rush. How in the world do you expect media to make money by peddling the brutal truth?

RM - Puer Aeternus, but working hard to be fully grounded in reality which is infinitely droll.

Er...whatever that is you're toking on, don't bogart it...

"Kiss goodbye to diversity of opinions, to variety of voice, to unfettered debate."

Michael I took the opportunity to read your post again, to see if I could find out what reaction you were expecting when you checked these messages responding to our blogmeister's posting, "American Media: Now Made from Concentrate!" (Now you have to keep in mind that people who talk up this whole blog thang incessantly need to come up with stuff to put on their blog on a daily basis, some of which might be characterized as "filler" or "fodder." But DW did show some creativity, as he usually does, and fulfilled the need to entertain the quixotic reader, who would choose to read this daily rant as opposed to engaging in more socially acceptable and productive activities. Geez, he did come up with the "made from concentrate" metaphor!)

Your points are most sensible, well-supported but I would say bordering, just a tad, on being naive, but well done nonetheless. However, I don't know why you chose such a serious, maybe even dramatic voice. (I went to your blog and was reassured that you do have the type of self-effacing humor and sense of irony that can generate interest about a piece of writing concerning the usual destruction of civil liberties and latest tech news.)

Satire is a most effective form of sublimination. If I don't overtly take anyone seriously, I don't expect that person to vanish from the face of the Web.

RM - refereeing the continual battle between freudians and jungians

I believe it was Lord Beaverbrook, that great Canadian publisher responding to a reporters question. "Beaverbrook you have so many ads in your paper why do you even bother with editorial?" His reply, "I must have something to separate the ads." Has anything really changed?