When I started out in the media game, life was simple and life was good. There was one commercial TV network, formed by 15 largely independent franchisees and broadcast advertising was relatively cheap and brilliantly successful.
For those who could not afford ITV, there was radio in the form of Radio Caroline, Radio London and a few fill-in stations such as Radio 270, Radio Scotland, Radio 390 and others. Advertising on the pirates was unbelievably good value for money. When Gibbs SR toothpaste launched a major advertising campaign on Caroline, shops sold out of Gibbs SR!
Today, the cake has been divided, sub-divided and sub-sub-divided, as huge corporations swallow one media vehicle after another, to the point where our local newspaper and radio station in Germany were both owned by Bauer Media. On moving to the UK, we discovered that the local newspaper and the local radio station are also owned by Bauer Media. In fact most of the radio dial is owned by Bauer Media - Absolute, Kiss, Magic, Heat, all the private property of one Yvonne Bauer.
If you don't want to fork out for the Bauer rate card, there's always all those little local newspapers, nearly all of whom belong to Gannett.
TV is just as bad, if not worse. The Freeview cake seems split into a hundred pieces, except that it too is in the grasp of just a handful of giants, such as Scripps, Viacom, the BBC, Liberty Global and the giant Berlesmann group, nearly all of whom work together via ITV to control cinema advertising as well!
The cross-ownerships and general cross-pollination between all these bodies, means that all the news comes from two broadcasters, BBC and ITN and they both rely on the same giant news agency, Reuters. Programmes drift between broadcasters, so the BBC shows programmes made by Granada and Carlton, ITV shows BBC programmes and Channel four stopped making any of its own programmes ages ago.
So there is almost (but not quite) no competition in the mass media (S-TV is still hanging in there - just!) and on-line is in the hands of one single company.
All your music comes from one of two companies and is delivered by just one network (Bauer owns half of 4-Music as well!) All the news comes from one news agency. There is one list of top news stories. There is one music play list. Soon, we'll all have just one opinion.
"Well you can't turn him into a company man
You can't turn him into a whore
And the boys upstairs just don't understand anymore
Well the top brass don't like him talking so much,
And he won't play what they say to play
And he don't want to change what don't need to change
"As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see
How much you'll pay for what you used to get for free
"And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice.
And there goes the last DJ."
