Ownership

You find yourselves in a war for attention with well-funded media giants, Internet companies, and telecom companies. In such a crowded and rapidly evolving marketplace, how can broadcasters succeed?  The trust that broadcasters have built over the years is real, and Americans’ personal connections with you are your greatest competitive edge....I believe a strong broadcasting industry serves the interest of the American people. Which raises an obvious question: what’s the FCC doing to help make this happen? 

Federal Communications Commissioners Michael O’Rielly, Brendan Carr, and Geoffrey Starks, spoke at a panel at the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters Commissioner show. Commissioner Carr emphasized the importance of getting out and about to see how ownership groups operate. He said ownership rules were scripted when the morning paper and evening newscast represented the extent of local news voices. "The market you all compete in today is vastly different,” he said, singling out Pandora, Spotify, and the “Silicon Valley giants” as prominent competitors to local TV.

The world’s biggest tech companies are spending billions of dollars on projects to get more people around the world connected to the internet. Facebook is in talks to develop an underwater data cable ring around Africa.

The digital economy accounted for 6.9 percent of the US gross domestic product, or $1.35 trillion, in 2017, according to a new batch of statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  How does that compare with traditional US industries? The digital economy ranked just below professional, scientific, and technical services, which accounted for 7.4 percent of GDP, and just above wholesale trade, with a 6.0 percent share.  New BEA data also show that:

On March 26, 2019, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons spoke before the Free State Foundation about how the FTC’s two missions -- competition and consumer protection -- apply to the internet ecosystem.

House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) reintroduced The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, making the case that the legislation is needed to level the playing field between tech giants and local news publishers. "It grows out of a recognition that we need to do something to give local media, local news publishers the ability to survive," Chairman Cicilline said. He argues that as ad revenue shifts from news publishers to Facebook and Google, it's time for Congress to intervene.

Public Knowledge supports the creation of a new regulatory agency dedicated to protecting consumers from the consequences (intended or unintended) of tech platforms. The creation of a new agency must be done carefully and with purpose. This agency must have a clear charge from Congress to analyze the entire diverse landscape of tech platforms, not just the dominant firms. The agency must be well stocked with experts in technology, markets, online communications and influence, community building, and the law, and should be empowered with clear rulemaking authority.

Here are the Federal Communications Commission's priorities for the next year:

The media landscape used to be straightforward: Content companies (studios) — made stuff (TV shows and movies) and sold it to pay TV distributors, who sold it to consumers. Now things are up for grabs: Netflix buys stuff from the studios, but it’s making its own stuff, too, and it’s selling it directly to consumers. That’s one of the reasons older media companies are trying to compete by consolidating. Disney, for example, recently completed its purchase of 21st Century Fox. Distributors like AT&T, which bought Time Warner, are becoming media companies, too.

Few private citizens have ever been more central to the state of world affairs than Rupert Murdoch. As the head of a sprawling global media empire, he commanded multiple television networks, a global news service, a major publishing house and a Hollywood movie studio. His newspapers and television networks had been instrumental in amplifying the nativist revolt that was reshaping governments not just in the United States but also across the planet.