Critics of the BBC will argue that it distorts the market,something that I have written about numerous times.
Robert Pickard takes a look at this very question in the United States as WGBH Education Foundation—operator of WGBH-TV, the highly successful Boston-based public service broadcaster announces that it will purchase the commercial radio station WCRB-FM.
As he points out
Were WGBH a commercial broadcaster, those who hate big media would be howling in protest, arguing that it puts far too much control of the airwave in the hands of one organization and that the concentration will create market power that harms competition. But they are strangely silent.
It does have similar parallels with criticisms handed at the BBC.For example the purchase of the Lonely Planet organiation springs to mind
If competition among commercial firms, between commercial and non-commercial firms, and among non-commercial firms is good for pluralism and diversity, cannot concentration and reductions in sources of news and entertainment due to acts of large not-for-profit firms also harm competition, pluralism and diversity?
Ht-Adrian Monck
1 comment:
commenting on the following comment... "Were WGBH a commercial broadcaster, those who hate big media would be howling in protest, arguing that it puts far too much control of the airwave in the hands of one organization and that the concentration will create market power that harms competition. But they are strangely silent."
They aren't "strangely silent", it's just no big deal. Far too much control? Two stations? Please. Up until the recent relaxation of ownership rules, a single owner could own one FM and one AM within a market, and that's the way it was for decades and nobody "howled in protest". How can there be a "howling protest" about a company owning two stations in the same market when there are those that own five of them? This is simply making a mountain out of a moot molehill as WGBH is, of course, NOT a commercial station. As I say to my children when they use the "IF" word, 'IF your grandmother had wheels, she'd be a little red wagon. She doesn't, so isn't.'
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