This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
Pretty much everything conservatives do is.
Don’t worry I got the reference
When are we going to prove whether or not consolidation of industries are good for consumers? Do we have enough data on this question since Milton Freedman passed?
In like the 1800s with the railroads. Turns out it’s bad.
And yet, we are going back to that same idea. What caused those companies to break up? Oh yeah, law were made. Why did were the laws made? Because a lot of union work stoppages and protests were happening across the country.
Union Pacific exits the chat
And railroads still screw up the nation to this day.
Like, random fun fact, to this day, the mineral rights under many homes in the west were owned by the railroads and owned by….someone to this day. Buy your house, the land underneath it is owned by someone else and if they want to mine or frack they can.
For what’s?
For consumers. It the justification given to allow mergers that feel like monopolies to occur. The companies put up the argument that the combined companies will provide better goods or services to consumers then as competitors and the judges sign off on it.
The juwhat? Is that when we give them their own courts? I thought that was the text formatting thing but I think that’s just on screen and a judge wouldn’t be able to sign off if they don’t have judges yet.
It’s not their own courts. But federal and state attorneys will sue the merger deal on antitrust grounds. So the judges are either federal or state appellate judges that hear the arguments. The trend in the past 40ish years to allow the merger because of the consumer good arguments.
Do you mean slop hogs?
This will make your parents and grandparents harder to reason with. They watch local news a lot, and Sinclair will have even greater reach into their brains. This widens the gulf between generations.
That’s okay, other outlets are designed to capture other generations, so the younguns won’t be overlooked either.
Everyone without a proper mental filter (education) - and maybe even then - is and will be getting attended to by Bullshit Mountain in one format or another. Xitter, Tiktok, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc…
More wealth concentration means more power concentration.
What this mean for us plebs?
Every local station will be conservative owned bullshit.
More specifically, the same conservative owned bullshit. Previously it would have to be different conservative billionaires to stay under the limit for each.
My guess is Sinclair will buy them all…
So true. I just was listening to Best of the Left, and the guy getting interviewed (Matthew Sheffield ) pointed out that conservatives have been and are practically socialists when it comes to massive spending on media - see how they happily pissed away tons of money on hate radio just so they could capture millions with that shit. Hell, the first five years of Faux ran in the red, IIRC. They didn’t spend like that for their health or just go on a lark. They had and have a plan. They want epistemic closure - you could see it in the way they reacted to Air America, LOL.
Meanwhile, the liberals have to pass the hat around to find funding for one lone outfit like Air America. And even that didn’t last.
I drove through Utah last year and I could swear I heard Hannity on two, possibly three, different stations when flipping around. It’s a conservative hellscape out there when it comes to terrestrial radio and local television “news”.
And it’s only going to get even worse, with the FCC doing this, AND threatening broadcasters merely for not running Donvict speaking…
More of this.
I knew what that was going to be before I clicked the link. I both love and hate that clip in equal parts.
Own nothing be happy fight communism ±happy
Your parents will be even more obnoxiously fascist.
Our local NBC and FOX stations have the same anchors. They just flip flop back and forth.
