Clear Channel Communications’ acquisition of over 1200 radio stations because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is an example of how consolidation has become a popular trend for today’s media conglomerates. Consolidation has proved to be a successful business strategy for large corporations like News Corp., Disney, and Time Warner. However, as media companies continue to consolidate, news content will continue to swing toward narrower audiences. Already magazines have developed narrower target audiences instead of trying to cater to a mass audience. This will continue to take place in mediums such as blogs, films, television, and print. Newspapers, magazines and books will cater to narrower, more targeted demographics, until they are rendered useless by the easy accessibility of an increasingly large and economic Internet. Television will carry much less weight in news media as more people start watching their favorite shows online. News search engines like Digg and Google News will damage subscriptions to print and online news sources, beyond repair until full access is free. News revenue will be made through advertising.
Technology will continue to advance and soon telecommunications, broadcast, and software companies will be forced to compete in the same markets. The computer and the phone, an increasingly similar technology will increase further in similarity. Phones similar to the iPhone and other smart phones will become cheaper and easier to use, while the wireless Internet and phone service become entirely free and much more accessible. Cell phone advertising will take place as companies like Google push telecommunications companies into providing free, open wireless networks to third party apps and devices. Already Verizon Wireless has announced that they intend to join Google and use Google’s Android, an open and entirely free mobile platform. The one thing that will remain unchanged by this entire shift is the way in which funding will take place. Sales, marketing, public relations, and ownership will drive industry decisions and continue to be the source of revenue for these companies. As wireless networks open and become free, media companies will make their money through advertising and applications.
- Adi Govindarajan and Whitney Jones