Young whippersnappers miss this point
More thinking about Batya's magnificent message on the media.

One point she makes repeatedly in various interviews is correct in general but not quite in specifics:

She says that before TV, there was typically one newspaper in a city. One newspaper doesn't want to divide the people, because it wants to advertise to everyone in town. Now we have divided media, so CNN and FOX can satisfy and amplify the most extreme views of the two teams.

She's correct about the unifying effect of a normal business in a smaller city or state. But the history of media doesn't really match the normal business model.

Before TV, newspapers WERE the dividers. As I've noted before, every village above 200 population had one weekly paper. Every town above 2000 had one daily. Cities above 20000 had more than one daily, often 5 or 6 in a city like Topeka or Spokane.

One-paper towns were TINY. The vast majority of the population lived in cities with two or more papers, so the vast majority could pick their favorite brand.

The real unifier was radio and TV, specifically because of the Fairness Doctrine, which was SERIOUSLY ENFORCED from 1934 to 1980. News and entertainment, including comedy, had to be STRICTLY NONPARTISAN. Batya is too young to remember FAIR radio.

= = = = =

We tend to think that monopoly creates disconnection from customers, and thus enables extreme or crazy views.

The causation is reversed. Monopoly vs competition isn't the driving variable. Disconnection from customers is the driving variable.

A profit-seeking business of any size wants as many customers as it can get, so it doesn't try to repel customers unnecessarily. (Obviously no business wants a non-paying or criminal customer.) This is true whether the business has a monopoly or not.

In the current globalized "market", big corporations DON'T WANT CUSTOMERS. They want SHAREHOLDERS, and SHAREHOLDERS all have one insane set of values and opinions.

This is not a monopoly problem, it's a complete failure and loss of BUSINESS AND CAPITALISM.

Labels: Constants and Variables, the broken circle

  ¶ 2:54 PM