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Ted Turner

Excerpt of "My Beef with Big Media"

    Published in the Washington Monthly, July/August 2004

    Also available at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html

When the U.S. system of broadcasting first developed in the early twentieth century, it was based on the idea that the airwaves belonged to the American people. Broadcasters were allowed to use this public property through a system of licenses. Since the Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), this government agency has issued rules and regulations to guide the broadcasting industry and ensure that it operates in the public interest.

Early on, the FCC decided that the public interest would be best served through diversity in ownership of radio and television stations. The agency placed strict limits on the total number of stations any individual or company could own. It also limited the number of stations that anyone could own in a single community or market. Finally, the FCC restricted cross-ownership of different types of communications media. This restriction meant, for instance, that one company could not own both a TV station and a major newspaper in the same city. The FCC made these rules in order to prevent a few large companies from dominating the flow of news and information. The agency felt that this would benefit the public by exposing people to a wide variety of viewpoints on important issues.

"The FCC says that we have more media choices than ever before. But only a few corporations decide what we can choose. That is not choice."

The FCC has made a number of changes to its media ownership regulations over the years. The agency has changed the rules in response to technological advances affecting the broadcast industry, such as the introduction of cable television systems. It has also made some changes in response to political pressure from industry leaders, various presidents, and Congress. In general, the FCC regulations on media ownership have been relaxed over time to allow individuals and companies to control more media outlets (radio and TV stations, cable TV systems, newspapers, and magazines). The rule changes have contributed to greater consolidation (merging or grouping together) of American broadcasting in the hands of a few large companies.

Massive Media

As of 2005, Viacom was one of the largest media corporations in the world. It held interests in virtually every part of the American communications and entertainment industries. For example, Viacom owned the CBS and UPN broadcast television networks. It also owned numerous popular cable TV channels, including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Noggin, TNN, BET, Comedy Central, TV Land, and Showtime. Through its Infinity Broadcasting division, Viacom owned more than 180 radio stations in major markets across the United States. It also owned the movie production companies Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG, as well as the television production company King World. Viacom was also the parent company for the book publishers Simon & Schuster and Scribner, and was part-owner of the video game manufacturer Sega. Finally, Viacom operated one of the nation's largest outdoor advertising businesses.

The structure of today's massive media corporations changes frequently, as managers try to respond to new business conditions and government regulations. In December 2005, Viacom decided to split into two separate companies, Viacom Inc. and CBS Corporation. This split effectively undid the 1999 merger between Viacom and CBS. The new CBS Corporation focused on broadcasting. It owned the CBS television and radio networks and the King World television production company. The new Viacom kept its cable TV channels, outdoor advertising business, and movie production companies.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996

A number of media ownership restrictions were reduced or eliminated with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This legislation took away many of the barriers separating different parts of the communications industry—including radio and television broadcasters, cable TV service providers, and long-distance telephone companies—in an attempt to increase competition and stimulate the development of new services. The act also extended the terms of radio and television broadcast licenses from three years to eight years and made it easier for stations to renew their licenses.

The 1996 law also relaxed the limits on ownership of television and radio stations. It eliminated the cap (maximum limit) on the number of television or radio stations one company could own nationwide. It also increased the cap on the portion of the national audience a single broadcast company could serve from 25 percent to 35 percent of the U.S. population.

The effects of the new law could be seen almost immediately in the radio industry. Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 took effect, a single company could own a maximum of forty radio stations nationwide. After the act passed, radio broadcasting entered a period of rapid consolidation. An amazing 60 percent of radio stations across the country changed owners over the next few years, resulting in the loss of 1,700 independent radio stations. Most of these stations were purchased by four large broadcasting companies. Clear Channel Communications, for instance, grew to own more than 1,200 radio stations in all fifty states, reaching 110 million listeners.

One of the main goals of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was to lower the rates that Americans paid for cable television service. The law was supposed to increase competition, and decrease costs, by allowing companies in other parts of the communications industry to become cable providers. Over the next five years, however, the seven largest cable operators purchased smaller systems until they controlled more than 75 percent of the national market. The consolidation of the cable industry contributed to a 30 percent overall increase in cable rates for consumers during this period.

Media consolidation

According to the PBS program NOW with Bill Moyers, North America contains around 2,000 television stations, 11,000 radio stations, 1,800 daily newspapers, 11,000 magazines, and 3,000 book publishers. In 1984, these media outlets were controlled by fifty different companies. By 1996, consolidation had reduced the number of companies that held a controlling interest in these media outlets to ten. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 resulted in even further consolidation. By 2002, most of the thousands of American broadcast and print media sources were controlled by only six large corporations. These major corporations had financial interests in a wide variety of other industries as well, including movies and music, alcoholic beverages, theme parks, professional sports franchises, telephone services, and nuclear power plants.

In 2002, the FCC launched a major review of its media ownership rules. Specifically, the agency considered weakening or eliminating regulations that limited ownership of cable television systems and prohibited cross-ownership of broadcast media and newspapers in the same market. Several large media corporations filed formal requests with the FCC to eliminate all of the remaining ownership rules. These companies claimed that the regulations were outdated and no longer necessary. After all, the FCC had put the rules in place at a time when space on the airwaves was limited, so the government had to limit ownership in order to ensure diversity in broadcasting. But the media giants argued that this was no longer a problem in the age of cable TV and the Internet, which gave the American people access to news and information from a wide variety of sources. In this new competitive atmosphere, they claimed that it was not possible for any one company to dominate the flow of information.

There is no question that it makes good business sense for large media companies to be involved in all aspects of mass communications. It is much easier and less expensive for the big corporations to control all aspects of television broadcasting, for instance, rather than contracting with separate, independent companies to produce programs and operate local TV stations. The media giants had such a strong financial interest in eliminating FCC ownership rules, in fact, that the broadcast industry spent nearly $250 million lobbying (working to persuade) the federal government between 1998 and 2004.

But opponents of media consolidation have a number of reasons to think that further deregulation (reduction or elimination of rules) of ownership is a bad idea. While critics admit that advances in technology have created new sources of news and information, they claim that most of these sources are controlled by the same handful of giant corporations. They point out that the desire to earn profits in one area of the business might create a conflict with these corporations' duty to provide fair and unbiased TV news coverage. For example, a network news program might be tempted to downplay its coverage of safety problems in a product manufactured by another division of its parent company. The media giants might also tend to provide more favorable coverage to the government in order to convince the president and members of Congress to support their efforts at deregulation. In general, the critics worried that media consolidation would create a situation in which the media would be used to serve corporate interests rather than the public interest.

In June 2003, the FCC announced the results of its review. The agency decided to increase the audience-reach cap for broadcasters to 45 percent of the U.S. population. It also decided to ease the restrictions on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership. These changes pleased many people in the broadcast industry, but they ran into a great deal of opposition from Congress and various consumer groups. In fact, the FCC received two million letters and electronic mail messages opposing the rule changes. One opposition group filed a lawsuit to prevent the changes from taking effect, and in September 2003 a federal court ruled in the group's favor and ordered the FCC to start the review process over again. When the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the broadcast industry's appeal in the case, it was considered an important victory for consumer groups and a blow to the large media corporations.

Ted Turner speaks out

One high-profile opponent of the FCC's proposed rule changes was Ted Turner, who made a name for himself in broadcasting by forming some of the first national cable TV networks and offering innovative cable programming. Born in 1938, Turner started his career by working in his father's billboard advertising business. After purchasing several radio stations in the late 1960s, Turner bought his first television station in 1970. This station, WTCG in Atlanta, was located at Channel 17 on the lesser quality UHF portion of the broadcast spectrum. At that time, stations affiliated with the Big Three national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) occupied the scarce VHF channels in nearly every important television market. But Turner disliked network programming and believed that independent stations could succeed by providing more wholesome options. He began showing old movies, cartoons, and sporting events to give viewers an alternative to the network offerings.

In 1976, Turner turned his small, independent station into a national cable network by arranging to deliver his signal to cable systems across the country via satellite. He changed his call letters to WTBS (for Turner Broadcasting System) and referred to it as a "Superstation." He soon convinced a number of national advertisers to begin placing their commercials on his cable network.

In 1980, Turner launched the Cable News Network (CNN) to provide viewers with news and information twenty-four hours per day. When promoting the new network, he claimed that he wanted to provide the American people with a source of news that was independent of the powerful broadcast networks. "Back in the Dark Ages, only the church and politicians had knowledge, and the people were kept in the dark," he declared in Ken Auletta's biography Media Man. "Information is power. I see CNN as the democratization of information."

The broadcast networks criticized CNN's low-budget production methods and called it the "Chicken Noodle Network." At first it appeared that CNN would be a short-lived experiment, as the network lost $20 million in its first year. But Turner's all-news format gradually attracted viewers and became profitable. It moved to the forefront of international news coverage during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when CNN reporters provided live coverage of U.S.-led bombing raids from a hotel balcony in downtown Baghdad, Iraq. CNN thus launched a revolution in up-to-the-minute television news coverage.

After the 2003 court ruling that forced the FCC to reconsider its media ownership rule changes, Turner began speaking out against further consolidation of the American media. He expressed his opinion in speeches and in articles for major newspapers and magazines. One of these articles, "My Beef with Big Media," is excerpted below.

Turner starts out by talking about his early career in television broadcasting, when he created Superstation TBS and CNN. He acknowledges that some FCC regulations helped him, as an independent broadcaster, compete with the established broadcast networks. For instance, the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962 required all new television sets sold in the United States to be equipped to receive UHF channels. Before this time, viewers had to purchase a separate tuner to receive these weaker channels. This rule change made it possible for more viewers to watch Turner's Atlanta-based UHF station. In 1972, the FCC issued another ruling that allowed cable TV operators to give their customers access to TV channels that originated in other cities. Before this time, cable providers could only retransmit the signals from local TV stations. This ruling aided the growth of cable television and allowed Turner to offer a wider variety of programs on TBS.

But Turner also argues that more recent FCC rule changes regarding station ownership have allowed too much media consolidation. He claims that a handful of large companies own most sources of information in the United States, including broadcast and cable networks, local TV stations, production companies that create TV programs, cable service providers, and book publishers. He says that this type of consolidation is harmful to broadcasting because it reduces the level of risk taking and the development of new ideas. He also claims that media consolidation has had a negative impact on the quality of television news. Turner acknowledges that his company, Turner Broadcasting, was big enough to benefit from some of the ownership rule changes. But he concludes by encouraging readers to urge the government to prevent further consolidation and break up some of the largest media corporations.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt of "My Beef with Big Media":

• In 1986, Turner took advantage of relaxed media ownership rules to purchase MGM—a major movie production company with a huge film library—in order to gain access to content for his cable TV networks. In 1995, however, media consolidation forced him to sell Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner Inc. He became vice chairman of Time Warner's board of directors and head of its cable TV networks division. In 2001, Time Warner merged with the Internet service provider America Online (AOL) to become AOL Time Warner. A short time later, Turner fell out of favor with corporate management. He resigned from his position as vice chairman in 2003, and in 2006 he announced that he would no longer serve on the AOL Time Warner board of directors. These experiences may have influenced his opinions on the subject of media consolidation.
• Turner blames media consolidation for the declining quality of American journalism. But some critics hold CNN partly responsible for the decline in TV news. They claim that the need to provide round-the-clock news pushed the American media toward sensational "tabloid journalism," which emphasized sleazy, celebrity-centered stories instead of important, but more complex, national and international news events.

Excerpt of "My Beef with Big Media"

In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing [in sailboats], a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market.

I acquired it.

When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte [North Carolina]—this one worse than the first—my accountant quit in protest, and the company's board [of directors] vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase—when I sold it 10 years later—gave me the capital to launch CNN.

Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch —independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change.

It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dotcom boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that [the U.S. government in] Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks—CBS, ABC, NBC—wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition.

So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That's how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That's how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Super-station was born.

That was then.

Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox—fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged [grown suddenly] to 77.5 percent.

In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own.

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys—they have to innovate, so they're less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It's called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what's happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming because it's cheap—even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they're afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see [on television]—and what we don't see—will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn't have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it's like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they're already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces.

The Big Squeeze

In the 1970s, I became convinced that a 24-hour all-news network could make money, and perhaps even change the world. But when I invited two large media corporations to invest in the launch of CNN, they turned me down. I couldn't believe it. Together we could have launched the network for a fraction of what it would have taken me alone; they had all the infrastructure, contacts, experience, knowledge. When no one would go in with me, I risked my personal wealth to start CNN. Soon after our launch in 1980, our expenses were twice what we had expected and revenues half what we had projected. Our losses were so high that our loans were called in. I refinanced at 18 percent interest, up from 9, and stayed just a step ahead of the bankers. Eventually, we not only became profitable, but also changed the nature of news—from watching something that happened to watching it as it happened.

But even as CNN was getting its start, the climate for independent broadcasting was turning hostile. This trend began in 1984, when the FCC raised the number of stations a single entity could own from seven—where it had been capped since the 1950s—to 12. A year later, it revised its rule again, adding a national audience-reach cap of 25 percent to the 12 station limit—meaning media companies were prohibited from owning TV stations that together reached more than 25 percent of the national audience. In 1996, the FCC did away with numerical caps altogether and raised the audience-reach cap to 35 percent. This wasn't necessarily bad for Turner Broadcasting; we had already achieved scale. But seeing these rules changed was like watching someone knock down the ladder I had already climbed….

Today, the only way for media companies to survive is to own everything up and down the media chain—from broadcast and cable networks to the sitcoms, movies, and news broadcasts you see on those stations; to the production studios that make them; to the cable, satellite, and broadcast systems that bring the programs to your television set; to the Web sites you visit to read about those programs; to the way you log on to the Internet to view those pages. Big media today wants to own the faucet, pipeline, water, and the reservoir. The rain clouds come next….

The FCC says that we have more media choices than ever before. But only a few corporations decide what we can choose. That is not choice. That's like a dictator deciding what candidates are allowed to stand for parliamentary elections, and then claiming that the people choose their leaders. Different voices do not mean different viewpoints, and these huge corporations all have the same viewpoint—they want to shape government policy in a way that helps them maximize profits, drive out competition, and keep getting bigger….

A few media conglomerates now exercise a near-monopoly over television news. There is always a risk that news organizations can emphasize or ignore stories to serve their corporate purpose. But the risk is far greater when there are no independent competitors to air the side of the story the corporation wants to ignore. More consolidation has often meant more news-sharing. But closing bureaus and downsizing staff have more than economic consequences. A smaller press is less capable of holding our leaders accountable ….

Naturally, corporations say they would never suppress speech. But it's not their intentions that matter; it's their capabilities. Consolidation gives them more power to tilt the news and cut important ideas out of the public debate. And it's precisely that power that the rules should prevent.

Independents' Day

This is a fight about freedom—the freedom of independent entrepreneurs to start and run a media business, and the freedom of citizens to get news, information, and entertainment from a wide variety of sources, at least some of which are truly independent and not run by people facing the pressure of quarterly earnings reports. No one should underestimate the danger. Big media companies want to eliminate all ownership limits. With the removal of these limits, immense media power will pass into the hands of a very few corporations and individuals.

What will programming be like when it's produced for no other purpose than profit? What will news be like when there are no independent news organizations to go after stories the big corporations avoid? Who really wants to find out? Safeguarding the welfare of the public cannot be the first concern of a large publicly traded media company. Its job is to seek profits. But if the government writes the rules in a way that encourages the entry into the market of entrepreneurs—men and women with big dreams, new ideas, and a willingness to take long-term risks—the economy will be stronger, and the country will be better off.

What happened next …

The issue of media consolidation continued to generate debate after Turner wrote his article. After completing its court-ordered review, the FCC planned to propose a new set of media ownership regulations in the fall of 2006.

Did you know …

• In September 2002, the FCC announced that it would conduct a major review of media ownership rules. According to a PBS survey, the only network television news program to cover the announcement was ABC's World News This Morning, which aired a three-sentence report at 4:40 a.m. Opponents of media consolidation pointed to the lack of coverage as evidence that the large media corporations did not want the public to know about their efforts to eliminate all restrictions on media ownership. As former FCC chairman Reed Hundt noted in a panel discussion covered by the Freedom Forum, "It's not clear to me that the media is going to lead a reasonable debate about the consolidation of the media."
• In early 2003, President George W Bush prepared to launch a U.S. military invasion of the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq. He said that the attack was necessary to prevent Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from providing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. In an effort to gain international support for a war against Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations in early February. Powell presented evidence that he said proved Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. He also suggested that a link existed between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. The media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a survey of media coverage of the Iraq situation during the week before and the week after Powell's presentation. FAIR found that only 3 out of 393 interviews that aired on the ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS television networks during this period were with people who opposed starting a war with Iraq. Critics claimed that television news slanted its coverage to support the president's position on the issue. "These are not media that are serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions," Amy Goodman and David Goodman wrote in the Seattle Times.
• Ted Turner has an amazingly varied list of lifetime achievements. For example, he is an accomplished sailor who won the America's Cup—the most prestigious yacht-racing event in the world—in 1977. He is also known as a successful owner of professional sports teams, such as the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and the Atlanta Braves baseball team, as well as the World Championship Wrestling series. Finally, Turner owns approximately 200 million acres of land in six western states, making him the largest private landowner in America. He maintains a herd of 40,000 bison on his property and runs a chain of restaurants featuring bison meat.

Consider the following …

• Visit the Web site for a large U.S. media corporation—such as Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Seagram, News Corporation, Sony, General Electric, or AT&T—and find a list of all of the media outlets it owns. Do you think that the public interest is best served by allowing these companies to control so many media outlets? Keep in mind that the public also includes people who work for and hold stock in these corporations.
• Research the ownership of a local television station or your favorite cable television channel. Is it connected to one of the large U.S. media corporations? What other media outlets does its parent company own? What similarities or differences do you notice in the way that these media outlets present information?

• Make lists of the potential problems and benefits associated with allowing one company to own television stations, radio stations, and daily newspapers in the same city. If you were an FCC commissioner, what action would you support regarding cross-ownership of broadcast and print media outlets?

For More Information

BOOKS

Auletta, Ken. Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

McChesney, Robert W. Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communications Politics in Dubious Times. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

PERIODICALS

Davies, Jennifer. "FCC Chief Calls for New Approach to Telecommunications Regulation." Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, December 10, 2003.

Goodman, Amy, and David Goodman. "Why Media Ownership Matters." Seattle Times, April 3, 2005.

Miller, Mark Crispin. "What's Wrong with This Picture?" Nation, January 7, 2002.

Turner, Ted. "Monopoly or Democracy?" Washington Post, May 30, 2003.

Turner, Ted. "My Beef with Big Media" Washington Monthly, July/August 2004.

WEB SITES

"Big Media: Media Regulation Timeline." NOW with Bill Moyers, January 30, 2004. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediatimeline.html (accessed on July 31, 2006).

"FCC Consumer Facts: Review of the Broadcast Ownership Rules." Federal Communications Commission, December 1, 2005. http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/reviewrules.html (accessed on July 31, 2006).

Finney, Robert. "Ownership: U.S. Regulatory Patterns." Museum of Broadcast Communications. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/O/htmlO/ownership/ownership.htm (accessed on July 31, 2006).

"Guide to FCC Rules on Media Ownership." Center for Digital Democracy. http://www.democraticmedia.org/issues/mediaownership/chart.html (accessed on July 31, 2006).

"Massive Media." NOW with Bill Moyers, April 26, 2002. http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/media.html (accessed on July 31, 2006).

"Speaking with One Voice: Does Media Cross-Ownership Stifle Diversity?" Freedom Forum Online, December 15, 2000. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=3183 (accessed on July 31, 2006).

Stohr, Greg. "Media Industry Rejected by Top U.S. Court on Station Ownership." Bloomberg.com, June 13, 2005. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=abgsaV4QV41c&refer=top_world_news (accessed on July 31, 2006).

Acquired: Bought.

Vetoed: Refused to approve.

Mortgaged: Borrowed money against.

Capital: Money.

Rupert Murdoch: (1931–) Australian businessman who launched the Fox network.

Upstarts: People who rise suddenly from a low position to one of power.

Entrepreneurs: People who start their own businesses.

Dot-com boom: A period when people rushed to create new Internet-based businesses, known as "dotcom" businesses after the extension ".com" used for commercial Web sites.

Localism: Attention to local and community issues.

Foothold: Starting point.

Import: Receive from other places and send to local areas.

RCA: Radio Corporation of America, one of the early manufacturers of broadcasting equipment.

Concentrated: Gathered closely into one large group.

Tilt the playing field: Change conditions to give an advantage to one side.

Innovate: Be creative; come up with new ideas.

Market share: The percentage of total customers served by each business within an industry.

Capitalism: An economic system in which private businesses compete against one another in a free market.

Oligopolies: Economic systems in which a few large businesses control the market.

Risk-averse: Unwilling or afraid to take risks or be exposed to dangerous situations.

Counter: Against or opposite.

Averse: Resistent to; likely to avoid.

Publicly traded: A business that sells shares of ownership to the public on the stock market.

Conglomerates: Very large corporations involved in a variety of businesses.

Moguls: Wealthy and powerful individuals.

Over-fishing the oceans: Catching so many fish that they all disappear; using up a resource.

Infrastructure: Basic equipment or framework.

Called in: Canceled; had to be repaid immediately.

Refinanced: Borrowed more money from someone else.

Entity: Individual or company.

Audience-reach cap: Upper limit on the percentage of American viewers one owner's TV stations could serve.

Achieved scale: Grown large enough to compete.

Dictator: Ruler who holds absolute power.

Monopoly: Complete control over all business within an industry.

News-sharing: A situation where print and broadcast news organizations use the same group of reporters in order to save money.

Bureaus: Branch offices of news organizations located in major cities.

Downsizing: Reducing; laying off.

Accountable: Responsible for their actions.

Quarterly earnings reports: Financial information that public companies release four times per year.

Safeguarding: Protecting.