We’ve all played the game Monopoly, in which you try to dominate the entire board.The media industry, on the other hand, is considered an oligopoly, which is when a small number of companies owns a large number of media outlets. This causes fewer opportunities for unique ideas to be generated, which causes less diversity in the media.

The conglomeration of media allows corporations to promote their own products without the public’s awareness. With the media being owned by few major conglomerates, problems have a risen through various forms of biases ◦Bias of Inclusion ◦Bias of Revision◦Bias of Omission

Coverage in the news that favors the parent company of the channel. This includes crosspromotion, which is when a media conglomerate promotes its productonits various other subsidiaries. ◦For example, a Disney movie was promoted on ABC, ABCFamily, and ESPN–

 A media outlet leaves out part of the news story that can damage the parent company. }Last summer, when the scandal with Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation surfaced, it was found that covered the scandal much less than other stations. Is owned by News Corporation. Coincidence?

In order to appropriately gauge the various bias found in the media, one must become media literate. Diversify where you get your news. This will allow you to spot what biases are found on various channels. It is important to know which outlets are owned by whom, which will over all allow you to see messages that may be included or excluded based on outlet sowned by the same parent company. In order to become media literate, you must become aware.

We are in the midst of a great debate on conglomerate mergers. While some have warned that the current merger movement poses grave dangers to the structure and vitality of competitive markets, others have defended conglomerate activity as a method if increasing the efficiency and dynamism of corporate enterprise, thereby adding the competitive vigor. Businessmen, economists, lawyers, and government officials are all having their say on this important issue. Out of the contribution each can make to this discussion will emerge, one hopes, a sound public policy towards conglomerate mergers. But development of such a policy requires that we probe beneath the surface of this debate into the core of the underlying facts of the problem. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Justice Homes, it seems to me that at this time we need "investigation of the obscure" more that further "education in the obvious".

What is "obvious"--and disquieting--is the impact of the current merger movement on the structure of the economy. The number and size of conglomerate mergers have substantially increased in recent years; the percentage of industrial assets owned by the largest 200 firms have increased significantly in the last two decades, from about 42% to about 61%; and mergers have contributed substantially to this increase in aggregate concentration.

What is "obscure," however, and in need of further investigation, are the actual competitive consequences of these merger-induced structural changes. We do not yet have the facts necessary to answer the most difficult, but basic, questions regarding the effects of the current merger movement on industrial behavior and performance, and on the structure of particular markets in which conglomerate firms operate. 

Philip Elman

Commissioner

Federal Trade Commission

In this Video Dan points out that most people simply don’t understand the fact that through media consolidation only a few international conglomerates are now in “bed” with big government in Washington. He points out that the alliance between big government and big corporations and campaign contributions affects the American people. They also talk about the new media era and how it could possibly be successful on the Internet.

http://current.com/shows/the-war-room/videos/media-conglomerates-in-bed-with-big-government

This is another great birds eye view in what exactly the "big six"owns.

This photo presents the illusion that we have the choice to view exactly what we want to view. The point is that there are some many tie-ins and synergies to these corporations and their advertising and agenda that we dont really have the choice, it's only an illusion.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q2qUjw0Z7gs

This YouTube video shows the president of Writer's Guild of america, Patric Veronne, speaking to the topic of media ownership. He most notably points out that in the last 25 years that the media climate had undergone drastic changes in corporations being able to acquire more media outlets, resulting in making themselves larger and more powerful. He also points out how the real art of storytelling is being diminished by the so called "reality" based "unscripted" programming, and how they fail to even recognize that they even have writers, and they're there not to meet the demand of story telling and character development, but of advertiser whim and product integration. 

This is a very simple video on who the 6 biggest conglomerates are and how much of the media they control. In 1983 there were 50 corporations controlling various forms of media and today there are 6. It isn't good that we have 6 giant company's controlling mass forms of outreach because by doing this the company can spread their own agenda through all their access through the media, good or bad. Disney for example owns ABC Family, ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, Lifetime, E, History Channel, Soap Net, and A&E. And this is just the TV networks that they own, not mentioning the TV/radio stations as well as the content and production company's that they own. So now that Disney, Viacom, CBS, GE, Time Warner, and News Corp own virtually every aspect of the media in many forms, they will be able to push their personal agenda and quite literally control what people are exposed to, for how long, and what type an affect it has. It turns out the agenda of these mega conglomerates are changing the internal aspect in which we view our forms of media. Many people do not pay attention to how transnational media conglomeration and synergy can have an affect on them, and this is where education comes in. We need to educate the ignorant on who owns what, and what they're potentially able to do with the power that this corporations have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu9usJBv7i4

Thesis: High concentration of Media Ownership

In this paper i will attempt to discuss many aspects of media conglomeration and synergy and how six of the biggest media corporations in the world emerged from this form of connection.