Consumer Access to Video and Audio Information Sources: Trends and Policy Implications
30 Pages Posted: 29 Jul 2012
Date Written: August 15, 2005
Abstract
Do individuals have access to more sources of news, information, and entertainment from their homes, cars, or workplaces now than 20 years ago? Is there a crisis impending due to the perception of increased consolidation of the media industry? Are the proposed rules of the Federal Communications Commission for lessening broadcast station ownership limits a reasonable response to court rulings and the changing media landscape or a threat to diversity of viewpoints and to democracy in the United States? This paper addresses these issues. It seeks to assess whether media consumers in the U.S. are better able to find the variety of news, entertainment, and information that we want and need, from more sources, with reasonable cost, than a generation or more ago, when presumably the media were less concentrated and, by inference, “better.”
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