Derek Turner of the media reform group Free Press has just released a study that shows that the television industry is still largely dominated by white men, even as other industries in the country diversify their ownership demographics. Entitled "Out of the Picture," the report cites a number alarming statistics on television station ownership:
- Women owned 28 percent of all non-farm businesses in 2002, but currently own less than 5 percent of commercial broadcast television stations.
- Minorities owned 18 percent of all non-farm businesses in 2002, but currently approximately 3 percent of commercial broadcast television stations.
- In sectors such as transportation and health care, all minority groups own businesses at or near their proportion of the general population. But in the TV broadcast sector, the two largest groups — African-Americans and Latinos — barely own 1 percent of stations.
It’s a very interesting study, particularly how it connects the decline in minority and women’s ownership of TV stations with the efforts of the FCC to relax restrictions on TV ownership rules. This has in turn allowed large conglomerates to sweep up entire markets worth of channels, making it harder for potential TV station owners to enter the market. Certainly, with the rapid increase in the numbers of stations available on cable and broadcast TV we can design a system that encourages more than token numbers of BET, Univision and Oxygen channels.
Statistically as one might expect.. i.e no surprise..
Another anecdotal view.. flip it ‘on its head’.. maybe these ‘minorities’ (who are these minorities by the way? aren’t they American, or British, Canadian, Australian or whatever citizens anymore..) choose not to ‘sell their souls to make a buck in the media market’…
Statistically, does this make them more, ‘as minorities’, more ‘moral’ that the mainstream?
‘Roll-up, roll-up, pick a number and place your bet….’
I’m unclear on what morality has to do with anything. The moral question for me is why this key piece of telecommunication infrastructure is dominated by a particular sector of society and not more inclusive?
Statistically speaking, if the market is truly fair for all entrants, than blacks, asians and hispanics and women should have a proportionally roughly representative number of their ranks as owners of TV stations. If that isn’t the case, then the questions becomes why?
Hi Rik
Yeah, it was sideways mind-hop which your post prompted in me – which I didn’t express very well – I just wondered whether the moral/business ethics of the industry had anything to do with it and peoples choices to be in it or not.. a bit off thread I’ll admit but that’s where that was going..
Of course it’s more likely to be about the comparitively ‘high entry barrier’ to certain ‘infrastructure heavy’ sectors like broadcast & telecommunications compared to the ‘control set’ of ‘all other non-farm businesses’.
The claimed ‘weakening’ position of traditional media may also be a factor I guess – it might be acting to discourage entry of ‘new owners’ and encouraging the conglomeration which you mention.