Why is total media monopoly being encouraged?

IN the 1950s, 90% of American media was controlled by 50 companies.

But following decades of media consolidation, by 2012, the 90% figure is now controlled by only six mega-media corporations. They are General Electric, News Corporation, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS. The fading of CBS as an entity means that the first five are still big dogs, and recent news from the world of media seems to signify a drop further.

Earlier this week, News Corporation - owned by billionaire Australian tyrant Rupert Murdoch and purveyors of the bibble that is Fox News - attempted to buy Time Warner. This initial bid was rebuffed, and sent Time Warner shares rising rapidly.

Murdoch clearly wants his hands on a media super-empire. Time Warner, which is currently significantly bigger than News Corp's US assets, is a major player. As well as the film studio that is more familiar to people in the UK as the purveyors of Harry Potter and Batman movies, it owns cable news channel CNN, cable subscription darling HBO, cable channels that show major sporting events and more.

One reason cited for this mega-merger is, ironically, a problem of Time Warner's own making. Time Warner spun out their cable company into its own firm, but that firm in the process of being gobbled up by Comcast, which is owned by General Electric. This would give Comcast/Time Warner a significant and almost unparalleled monopoly of its own in the media distribution market. 20 out of the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the USA would be exclusively controlled by their networks, and they would be the single largest internet, cable TV and phone provider in the USA.

This merger of distributors is an easy reason for alarm bells to ring in the office of media content makers reliant on their networks. After all, it was proven during negotiations between Comcast and Netflix that Comcast deliberately slowed down Netflix download speeds on their network to get them to sign to their terms.

Then there is also Rupert Murdoch's desire to be a planet-gobbling media monopoly. Disgraced in the UK after the phone hacking scandals of his newspapers, and facing potential criminal trials in the USA over it, he may be, but he is still a large presence in global media. He owns an obscene amount of media in Australia, which perhaps influenced people to vote for brain-lacking Prime Minister Tony Abbott in their last election, and is one of the American monopolies' biggest names.

The empire building thing is clearly not something dying in him. Hence this - not least given he's tried it before. He attempted to purchase Time Warner on more than one occasion, and both times, just like he was this week, Time Warner said no.

Many think the deal is motivated by Murdoch wishing to acquire HBO - the cable network that has been an outstanding revenue generator for Warner and makes critically acclaimed programming monoliths like Game of Thrones, Girls, True Detective and the like.

This deal would be a tricky one to seek to get past the monopoly regulators if this was anywhere else in the world. While noise has been made the Rupert Murdoch empire would sell off CNN if a takeover was to go through - a move that would prevent Fox News and its 24 hour news channel rival being under the same umbrella - the ownership of major TV firms and film studios under one roof is a major concern.

Time Warner believe they can go for more than $100billion - the first bid was $80billion - and certainly, any auction would see more players involved. There had speculation Google wants to buy Time Warner as well, which at the least would improve its own pitiful attempts at original programming.

But the combination of this and the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger reeks of the fragrant disregard for competition, even though conservatives always argue for competition between things. While not relevant to the US market, conservatives in the UK always argue competition between private firms is somehow better than the public sector daring to do things without profiting from them. Granted, that methodology has its own limitations, but conservatives like Murdoch badger on about state-controlled monopolies being bad and competition among private sector companies being good

But clearly, its not a case they fully believe monopoly is bad, otherwise there would actually be competition. Murdoch and others like him in all manner of places clearly - in any business, not just media - just don't want to be on the outside of the empire business looking on in envy at either government or rivals, and instead want to be the ones controlling it. They want to control everything, in a similar way to how former CNN boss Ted Turner envied Rockerfeller and Standard Oil for merging, controlling everything from oil extraction to selling the finished petrol and diesel products.

Big monopolies in media, however, don't seem to have the work cut out. After all, Time Warner once merged with AOL in a major merger, but both companies suffered for it. The current Time Warner is also doing better than the one that also owned the cable company of the same name, and Time Magazine, and a merger of these two could be financially destructive for Murdoch.

Murdoch also hasn't exactly got form with this punt. His purchase of MySpace in 2006 is now legendary for ruining it as an entity, and any auction for Time Warner could price him out.

But it is still a big problem of how ready acceptance seems to be for the dwindling of choice. That figure of 50 media companies being reduced down to four in the space of sixty years despite the sprouting up of more outlets is a significant problem on the US market.

Its also a problem for us here in the UK, considering that it means the multiplex is controlled by those two, which may lead to more crap being churned out to keep out rivals from the Comcast-owned Universal Pictures. Admittedly that would be an achievement given how poor most cinema is nowadays.

This wanton allowance of monopoly, be it in media, electricity or whatever, is just a damaging principle that helps disprove the thesis competition is alive.