Media Ownership Statistics

Who Owns the Media?, a page on the website of Free Press, has links to a variety of online resources on media ownership, documenting the assets of the multi-national corporations that control most of what we see, hear and read on this planet. Sections include: Interactive Charts that let you browse individual company holdings by media sector: The “Big Six” companies, Cable providers, Television networks & stations, Print media, and Telecommunications; Top 20 Lists, lists of owners for the top 20 Web sites, Cable channels, Daily newspapers, and Local TV stations; and Research and Reports on a variety of topics including minority & female TV and radio station ownership in the U.S., cable TV companies and more. Their AT&T History graphic "shows how much (or how little) things have changed since the government broke up Ma Bell." You can also just search "statistics" in their search box and get lots of good results. Search the word "media" in their general website search box to get about 38 statistical tidbits, some of which relate to media ownership, political lobbying, etc.

AdAge magazine offers the "Media Family Trees Poster 2007, A graphical guide to 15 top media companies and their holdings." (scroll down until you see the link. You may have to register on the site, but it's free.). This a very large-format, colorful document with one of the most current (data is actually for 2006) charts of who owns what in the media world, with gross revenues for the 15 largest media companies and their various media holdings. Very difficult (if not impossble) to print but teachers might be able to receive a copy of the poster by contacting AdAge directly.

The Center for Public Integrity has a very cool, interactive Media Tracker page that allows you to put in your zip code and then produce a chart and map telling how many media companies own how many outlets in your area (and showing where they are), plus the names of the top five broadcast owners. For the zip code of MediaLiteracy.com, based in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento, Calif., we found out that we have, within 100 miles, 18 licensed television stations, 24 licensed radio stations, 1 "matching cable community," 9 reported broadband providers and 21 newspapers. Who knew?

In 2004, Forbes magazine calculated that over one-third of the 40 richest Americans generated the bulk of their income through media or media-related industries. Ffrom " Big Media: the Real Elephant in the Garden," by Timothy Karr, August 27, 2004, writing for MediaChannel.org.

U.S. Politics and Elections

Looking for media-related data on the 2008 U.S. elections? It's impossible for us (or any website) to keep up. Your best bet: sign up for Google Alerts, which will send to your email inbox (your choice of as-it-happens, once per day or once per week) hotlinks to the search terms you enter (use quotes around anything that's more than one word) found on the web, in blogs, news, etc. Get an alert for each of several words or phrases, then see what gets you the best results and cancel the others.

The Center for American Progress article, "Media Again Fails Our Democracy," has good information on the 2006 campaigns. Also, their June 2007 report, "The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio," has a ton of statistics on political radio and the imbalance between conservative and liberal programming.

2004 campaigns

• A study by The Center for Public Integrity, detailed in their article," A Wealth of Advice," found that in the 2003-2004 presidential election cycle, candidates for national office, party committees and independent "527" political groups spent more than $1.78 billion on campaign consultants, 67 percent of which went to media consultants who handle ads. A wonderful graphic chart shows the proportion spent on media itself, and you can click to another graphic of pie charts showing the proportion of media spending (aggregated) spent by Senate, House and presidential candidates as well as by politica parties and 527 political groups.
• Media, Youth, and Civic Engagement [Fact Sheet] by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Reviews how the media was used to get out the 2004 vote, ways television and movies depict politics and government, and how the Internet is used to engage youth (age 18-25) in civic and political activities.
• The spiraling costs of airtime for political ads is the main reason candidates raise increasing sums of campaign money from wealthy special interests.In 2004, broadcasters - that were granted licenses to use publicly-owned airwaves, free of charge -- will rake in a record $1.5 billion from political ads. At the same time, radio and television news coverage of local, state and federal campaigns has plummeted, with more than half of all top-rated local television newscasts airing no campaign coverage in the seven weeks leading up to Election Day 2002. from " Big Media: the Real Elephant in the Garden," by Timothy Karr. August 27, 2004, writing for MediaChannel.org.
• The non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in January 2003 provided statistics on a fundamental shift in how Americans get their election news. More are turning away from the establishment media and getting their campaign information from newer outlets.
  Read the study: "Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe".

Political Lobbying by U.S. Media Corporations

From 1999 through 2003, Washington lobbyists pocketed $160 million in media largesse to support dismantling rules against conglomerates buying up more independent media outlets in more markets, according to a report by Common Cause. In the last eight years, big media has tipped more than $30 million into the war chests of federal candidates, with the larger share (62 percent) ending up in the hands of regulation-hostile Republicans. from " Big Media: the Real Elephant in the Garden," by Timothy Karr. August 27, 2004, writing for MediaChannel.org.

From 1999 through 2003, General Electric doled out $69,610,000 to media lobbyists in Washington, DC. The company, which controls NBC, CNBC and MSNBC, also contributed more than $5 million to federal candidates seeking office over the last eight years. from " Big Media: the Real Elephant in the Garden," by Timothy Karr. August 27, 2004, writing for MediaChannel.org.

Who's on First?

An August, 2004 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting study of Fox's "Special Report with Brit Hume" found that conservatives accounted for 72 percent of the show's political guests, while centrists made up 15 percent and progressives only 14 percent. from " Big Media: the Real Elephant in the Garden," by Timothy Karr. August 27, 2004, writing for MediaChannel.org.