Many media entities are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. American media conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large revenues as well as large opposition in many parts of the world. With the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, further deregulation and convergence are under way, leading to mega-mergers, further concentration of media ownership, and the emergence of multinational media conglomerates. These mergers enable tighter control of information.[1] Currently, a handful of corporations control the vast majority of both digital and legacy media.[2][3][4] Critics allege that localism, local news and other content at the community level, media spending and coverage of news, and diversity of ownership and views have suffered as a result of these processes of media concentration.[5]
Theories to explain the success of such companies include reliance on certain policies of the American federal government or a tendency to natural monopolies in the industry, with a corporate media bias.
The organization Reporters Without Borders compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. In 2023–24, United States was ranked 55th out of 180 countries (a drop of ten places from the previous year) and was given a "problematic" rating.[6] A 2022 Gallup poll showed that only 11% of Americans trust television news and 16% trust newspapers.[7] On the future of Spanish-language media in the U.S., Alberto Avendaño, ex-director of El Tiempo Latino/Washington Post, claimed that "Hispanic-American" news coverage in the English-language media is "absolutely pathetic," but he was optimistic, arguing that demographic shifts would inevitably render the Latino media a significant presence in the context of American media.
According to a May 2023 AP-NORC poll, 74% of respondents said the media is to blame for increased political polarization in the United States.[8]
After being widely successful in the 20th century, newspapers have declined in their influence and penetration into American households over the years. The U.S. does not have a national paper. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today are the most circulated newspapers in the United States and are sold in most U.S. cities.[9]
Although the primary audience for The New York Times (NYT) had initially been the residents of New York City and its surrounding metropolitan region, the NYT, nicknamed "the Grey Lady" and which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes of any publication, has gradually become the dominant "newspaper of record" for the U.S. media. Apart from its daily nationwide distribution, the term means that back issues are archived on microfilm by every decent-sized public library in the nation, and the Times' articles are often cited by both historians and judges as evidence that a major historical event occurred on a certain date. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are also newspapers of record, to a lesser extent. Although USA Today has tried to establish itself as a national paper, it has been widely derided by the academic world as the "McPaper" and is not subscribed to or archived by most libraries.[10]
Apart from the aforementioned newspapers, all major metropolitan areas have their own local newspapers. Most metropolitan areas will generally support one or two major newspapers, with many smaller publications targeted towards particular audiences. Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major news agency wire service, such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters[11] for their national and world coverage.
The Washington Post on Monday, July 21, 1969, stating "'The Eagle Has Landed'—Two Men Walk on the Moon".
With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families.
Most general-purpose newspapers are either being printed one time a week, usually on Thursday or Friday, or are printed daily. Weekly newspapers tend to have much smaller circulation and are more prevalent in rural communities or small towns. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily papers, for example, New York City's Village Voice or Los Angeles' L.A. Weekly, to name two of the best-known. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries, and papers for local ethnic and social groups.
As competition from other media has evolved, the number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has declined over the past half-century, according to Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of American newspapers. In particular, the number of evening newspapers has fallen by almost one-half since 1970, while the number of morning editions and Sunday editions has grown.
For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450 – or about 70 percent – of them were evening papers) while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766—or about half—of them were evening papers.)
Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded:
Year
Circulation
1960
58.8million
1970
62.1million
1980
62.2million
1990
62.3million
2000
55.8million
The primary source of newspaper income is advertising – in the form of "classifieds" or inserted advertising circulars – rather than circulation income. However, since the late 1990s, this revenue source has been directly challenged by Web sites like eBay (for sales of secondhand items), Monster.com (jobs), and Craigslist (everything).
Additionally, as investigative journalism declined at major daily newspapers in the 2000s, many reporters formed their own non-profit investigative newsrooms. Examples include ProPublica on the national level, Texas Tribune at the state level and Voice of OC at the local level.
In August 2019, it was announced that New Media Investment Group had agreed to buy Gannett, and operations would continue under the Gannett rather than GateHouse name, at the Gannett headquarters but under New Media's CEO.[12][13] The acquisition of Gannett by New Media Investment Group was completed on November 19, 2019, making the combined company the largest newspaper publisher in the United States.[14] Immediately after the merger was finalized, all GateHouse Media URLs began redirecting to Gannett.com.
La Opinión is the most read newspaper website in the United States, reaching more than 6 million readers each month. It is the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States and the second-most read newspaper in Los Angeles (after The Los Angeles Times).
Thanks to the huge size of the English-speaking North American media market, the United States has a large magazine industry with hundreds of magazines serving almost every interest, as can be determined by glancing at any newsstand in any large American city. Most magazines are owned by one of the large media conglomerates or by one of their smaller regional brethren. The American Society of Magazine Editors sponsors the annual National Magazine Awards recognizing excellence.
The U.S. has three leading weekly news magazines: Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. Time and Newsweek are center-left while U.S. News & World Report tends to be center-right. Time is well known for naming a "Person of the Year" each year, while U.S. News publishes annual ratings of American colleges and universities.
El Nuevo Cojo (Los Angeles), and Two Mundos Magazine (Miami) are two bilingual (English/Spanish) lifestyle and entertainment magazines. It's not a coordinated exodus for magazines in the United States but the transition from print's primacy to digital's that has started at the turn of the century.
Fireside chat on government and capitalism (September 30, 1934)
American radio broadcasts in two bands: FM and AM. Some stations are only talk radio – featuring interviews and discussions – while music radio stations broadcast one particular type of music: Top 40, hip-hop, country, etc. Radio broadcast companies have become increasingly consolidated in recent years. National Public Radio is the nation's primary public radio network, but most radio stations are commercial and profit-oriented.
Talk radio as a political medium has also exploded in popularity during the 1990s, due to the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which meant that stations no longer had to "balance" their day by programming alternative points of view.[citation needed]
A new form of radio that is gaining popularity is satellite radio. The two biggest subscriptions based radio services are Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, which have recently merged to form Sirius XM Radio. Unlike terrestrial radio music channels are commercial free and other channels feature minimal commercials. Satellite radio also is not regulated by the FCC.
During the advent of the internet in the 21st century, internet radio and digital streaming services have been emerged. Among popular brands are Pandora, Spotify and iHeartRadio. Although, the recording industry also sees Internet radio as a threat and has attempted to impose high royalty rates for the use of recorded music to discourage independent stations from playing popular songs. Spotify listeners can choose the songs they want to play, when they want to play them. ... Pandora is a way for users to discover new music that matches their tastes, while Spotify—even though it offers radio stations, too—is better suited to stream and share music that users already know and love.
Nielsen Audio, formerly known as Arbitron, is consumer research company that provides ratings (similar to the Nielsen ratings) for national and local radio stations in the United States.
Digital Audio Broadcasting goal is to replace FM broadcasting and become the future of radio. Some industry experts are wary of this new transmission method. ... However, this method of transmission could benefit internet radio stations that want to develop local coverage and keep up to speed with FM radio stations.
Press photographers and film crews at Barack Obama rally, February 4, 2008
Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one.[15] The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), CBS (formerly the Columbia Broadcasting System), the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and the Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox).[16] On August 13, 2019, CBS and Viacom officially announced their intention to merge, with the combined company to be named ViacomCBS. The merger was completed on December 4, 2019.[17][18][19][20] The company will have 50% interest in The CW.
The five major US broadcast networks
Several Spanish language broadcast (as well as cable) networks exist, which are the most common form of non-English television broadcasts. These networks are not as widely distributed over-the-air as their English counterparts, available mostly in markets with sizable Latino and Hispanic populations; several of these over-the-air networks are alternatively fed directly to cable, satellite and IPTV providers in markets without either the availability or the demand for a locally based owned-and-operated or affiliate station.
The largest of these networks, Univision, launched in 1986 as a successor to the Spanish International Network. Its major competition is Telemundo (est. 1986), a sister network of NBC (which acquired Telemundo in 2001). Founded: 2009 Estrella TV is another Spanish-language broadcast television network.
Public television has a far smaller role than in most other countries. However, a number of states, including West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and South Carolina, among others, do have state-owned public broadcasting authorities which operate and fund all public television stations in their respective states. The income received from the government is insufficient to cover expenses and stations also rely on corporate sponsorships and viewer contributions.
Robert Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2million against an initial budget of $7,000 (before studio production costs) and launched his own cable television channel, El Rey thanks to advances in technology.
In the 20th century, the motion picture industry rose to become one of the most successful and powerful industries in the U.S. Along with other intellectual property industries, its relative importance to the American economy has strengthened as the importance of manufacturing and agriculture have decreased (due to globalization).[23]
Rise of the home video market (1980s–1990s)
The 1980s and 1990s saw another significant development. The full acceptance of home video by studios opened a vast new business to exploit. Films such as Showgirls, The Secret of NIMH, and The Shawshank Redemption, which may have performed poorly in their theatrical run, were now able to find success in the video market. It also saw the first generation of filmmakers with access to videotapes emerge. Directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson had been able to view thousands of films and produced films with vast numbers of references and connections to previous works. Tarantino has had a number of collaborations with director Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2million against an initial before-production budget of $7,000. In 2011, El Mariachi was inducted into the Library of Congress to be preserved as part of its National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is further immortalized by Guinness World Records as the lowest-budgeted film ever to gross $1million at the box office.[24] This was possible thanks to the explosion of independent film enabled by ever-decreasing costs for filmmaking. With the rise of the DVD in the 21st century, DVDs have quickly become even more profitable to studios and have led to an explosion of packaging extra scenes, extended versions, and commentary tracks with the films.[citation needed]
Rise of digital distribution
DVD and high-definition Blu-ray sales have substantially declined with the rise of video on demand, especially over-the-top streaming services. The range of viewing devices went through another mass expansion with the popularization of tablet computers and smartphones.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, drive-in theaters reported an unexpected surge in attendance in several U.S. states as, unlike with indoor theaters unable to operate because of bans on mass gatherings, these were allowed to operate.
The United States has the largest video games presence in the world in terms of total industry employees.[25] In 2017, the U.S. game industry as a whole was worth US$18.4billion and consisted of roughly 2457 companies that had a rough total of 220,000 people employed.[26][27] U.S. video game revenue is forecast to reach $230billion by 2022,[28] making it the largest video game market in the world.[citation needed] Over 150 million Americans play video games, with an average age of 35 and a gender breakdown of 59 percent male and 41 percent female.[29]
In 2011, the average American gamer spent an average of 13 hours per week playing video games.[30]
Online streaming now makes it possible to watch everything from live news and sports to classic movies to modern TV favorites in their own time, on any device. With the popularity of online streaming rising cable companies are having to extend offers to compete in this 655billion dollar digital market.[31]
Virtual MVPDs are over-the-top live video streaming services that mirrored cable and TV Everywhere bundled services, priced at lower monthly rates than packages offered by traditional pay television system operators. Sling TV, PlayStation Vue and fuboTV were launched in 2015. DirecTV Now followed in 2016. and Philo in 2017. New York magazine has a Vulture's streaming guide to the TV Shows and movies available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Hulu. The term "streaming wars" was coined to discuss the new era of competition between video streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Funimation, Crunchyroll, etc.[32]
Broadcast and entertainment cross-ownership
Most of the current major film studios have become part of corporate conglomerates that also include major television broadcast networks and some of the most popular news and entertainment cable television channels. Sony Pictures has been an exception, and Fox sold its film properties to Disney in 2019, retaining its television and radio broadcast operations. All of the major entertainment companies have launched streaming services as they face competition from new media companies. Amazon purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of the "big five" studios in the Golden Age of Hollywood, in 2022. Comcast is also a major Internet service provider, representing a high degree of vertical integration.
This conglomeration gives owners the ability to reuse the same content between theaters, broadcast, and streaming, and to use intellectual property from media franchises it owns across its businesses without worrying about licensing. Some owners have extended their franchises into in-person theme parks and video games. Constantly looking for fresh source material, the major entertainment companies often compete to buy the rights to adapt books and independent films; Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery own the country's top two comic book publishers. Some media franchises are also cross-licensed, especially for streaming and theme parks.
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainment Group division of Paramount Global and is one of the company's three flagship subsidiaries, along with namesake Paramount Pictures and MTV.
The media of Canada is highly autonomous, uncensored, diverse, and very regionalized. Canada has a well-developed media sector, but its cultural output—particularly in English films, television shows, and magazines—is often overshadowed by imports from the United States. As a result, the preservation of a distinctly Canadian culture is supported by federal government programs, laws, and institutions such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
USA Today is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.
Gannett Co., Inc. is an American mass media holding company headquartered in New York City. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation.
WHEC-TV is a television station in Rochester, New York, United States, affiliated with NBC. Owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, the station maintains studios on East Avenue in Downtown Rochester and a transmitter on Pinnacle Hill in Brighton.
CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadcasting since the 1970s. The broadcasting company was sold to Entercom on November 17, 2017.
Television is one of the major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August 2013. Most households have more than one set. The percentage of households owning at least one television set peaked at 98.4%, in the 1996–1997 season. In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did. In 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households had cable television subscriptions. However, this number has fallen to 40% in 2024.
WCCO-TV, branded CBS Minnesota, is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the CBS outlet for the Twin Cities area. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios on South 11th Street along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; its transmitter is located at the Telefarm complex in Shoreview, Minnesota.
KMOV is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside low-power station KDTL-LD. The two stations share studios on Progress Parkway in suburban Maryland Heights; KMOV's transmitter is located in Lemay, Missouri.
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought. The term is used to contrast with alternative media.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, during the network era of American television, there were three commercial broadcast television networks – NBC, CBS, ABC – that due to their longevity and ratings success are informally referred to as the "Big Three". The three networks' dominance was interrupted with the launch of Fox in 1986, leading it to join them as one of the expanded "Big Four", while the viewership shares of all the major broadcast networks declined over the following years.
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation was an American multinational media company with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and television production. It was formed on December 31, 2005, as the legal successor of the original Viacom, following the spin-off of the second incarnation of Viacom; both CBS Corporation and the second Viacom were controlled by National Amusements, a theater company owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone.
Spelling Television Inc. was an American television production company that went through several name changes. It was originally called Aaron Spelling Productions, then Spelling Entertainment Inc. and eventually part of Spelling Entertainment Group. The company produced popular shows such as The Love Boat, Dynasty, Beverly Hills, 90210, 7th Heaven, Melrose Place and Charmed. The company was founded by television producer Aaron Spelling on October 25, 1965. The company is currently an in-name-only unit of CBS Studios. A related company, Spelling-Goldberg Productions, co-existed during a portion of the same time period and produced other well-known shows such as Family, Charlie's Angels, Starsky & Hutch, and Fantasy Island but these series are not part of the modern day library now owned by Paramount Global. Another related company, The Douglas S. Cramer Company co-existed during a portion of the same time period, produced shows like Wonder Woman, Joe and Sons, and Bridget Loves Bernie and television films like Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway.
CBS News and Stations is a division of the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global that owns and operates a group of American television stations along with CBS News. As of January 2021, the division owns 28 stations: 14 are the core stations of the CBS television network, two are affiliates of The CW, eleven are independent stations, and one is a primary-channel affiliate of the digital subchannel network Start TV. It also maintains a half-interest in Start TV, which is co-owned with Weigel Broadcasting.
The original phase of Viacom Inc. was an American mass media and entertainment conglomerate based in New York City. It began as CBS Television Film Sales, the broadcast syndication division of the CBS television network in 1952; it was renamed CBS Films in 1958, renamed CBS Enterprises in 1968, renamed Viacom in 1970, and spun off into its own company in 1971. Viacom was a distributor of CBS television series throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and also distributed syndicated television programs. The company went under Sumner Redstone's control in 1987 through his cinema chain company National Amusements.
Media cross-ownership is the common ownership of multiple media sources by a single person or corporate entity. Media sources include radio, broadcast television, specialty and pay television, cable, satellite, Internet Protocol television (IPTV), newspapers, magazines and periodicals, music, film, book publishing, video games, search engines, social media, internet service providers, and wired and wireless telecommunications.
CBS Broadcasting, Inc. is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network owned by Paramount Global through the CBS Entertainment Group. Along with ABC and NBC, CBS is one of the traditional "Big Three" American television networks.
A carriage dispute is a disagreement over the right to "carry", that is, retransmit, a broadcaster's signal. Carriage disputes first occurred between broadcasters and cable companies and now include direct broadcast satellite and other multichannel video programming distributors.
Pluto TV is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service owned and operated by the Paramount Streaming division of Paramount Global.
↑ Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, Michael Smith (2014). Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.Harper Perennial. ISBN0062305573 p. 189:
"Twenty years ago, thirty corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. Today, it is a grand total of six mega-corporations – Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS and Comcast. Besides accumulating their own profits, the media are daily trumpets for the rest of the corporate world's advertising."
↑ Converging Media, Diverging Politics: A Political Economy of News Media in the United States and Canada. Edited by David Skinner, James R. Compton, and Michael Gasher, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. Robert William Jensen, review essay of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times," published in The Texas Observer, September 17, 1999, archived hereArchived December 4, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
"Media History Digital Library". David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, directors. USA. Non-profit...dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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