For-Profit Media?

This week we are looking at how media consolidation and the business practices of big media affect the content that is produced. This has different meanings and effects across different media- whether we're talking about music, the news, television, the internet. In your blogs this week, you might try to find your own evidence of the various concerns and effects Croteau & Hoynes bring up. Do you agree that media consolidation limits diversity of content? Do you see evidence of vertical and horizontal integration? How does media's dependence on advertising and the for-profit model infiltrate media across the board? Can you illustrate an example of synergy?

You can also contrast the for-profit, market model of the media with an alternative vision: the media as a public resource, an important place for different views to be expressed and for dialogue about important social issues. This is where the Habermas reading comes in- what does he mean by the "public sphere?" Do you think today's media can embody the public sphere? Or has the market model ensured that the view of the mass media as a public resource is lost?

If you want to focus on our viewing of Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music, and our look at research in music diversity, here are some things you could do:

1. Test Robert McChesney’s argument in the film that MTV is basically a 24-hour infomercial. Watch MTV for a full hour and keep a running log of everything you see. Did you see anything in the course of the hour that wasn’t trying to sell something else? Was the so-called “content” itself a kind of commercial? If so, what do you think it was selling? What differences did you notice between “official” ads and this “content”?

2. Check out Billboard Magazine’s hit list for this week (http://www.billboard.com).Check out the top songs. Can you find out which record companies these artists are on? What do you find about music diversity?