For our group Media Hegemony project, we decided to look at the corporation Viacom. Viacom is one of the six major media corporations also including Disney, Times Warner, News Corp, CBS, and General Electric.
For the project we created a poster illustrating Viacom’s numerous media outlets, including all forms of media, print, Internet, film and other outlets they own. I was the main designer of the poster, while the other girls contributed information and suggestions.
Viacom currently owns:
Publishing Broadcast Internet
Nickelodeon MTV SpikeTv.com
Famous Music Publishing Co. VH1 ComedyCentral.com
The Extreme Music Library TV Land Neopets.Inc
Famous Players BET ifilm.com
Xfire Paramount Comedy BET on Blast
MTV Mobile iFilm Corp. Sonicnet.com
Director’s Cut Production Music Nick Gas Nick.com
The Box Gametrailers.com
Viva GT.tv
CMT Cmt.com
The Colbert Report
The Daily Show
Dreamworks
AND MANY MORE!!!
Media conglomerates are large media corporations that join with other companies to control a larger amount of media activities. The problem with media conglomerates is that ownership can affect the information being covered. “Stories can end up being biased or omitted so as not to offend advertisers or owners. The ability for citizens to make informed decisions is crucial for a free and functioning democracy, but now becomes threatened by such concentration in ownership” (Global Issues).
Diversity of message and information is threatened when companies are all owned by the same corporation and subsequently produce the same message. This creates a bias and one-minded society.
Some may say that the point of owning a business is to become the biggest, the best and the richest, so what is wrong with what these companies are doing? (I myself was one of these people) However, although it is good to have competition, the competition produced by these conglomerates relies on sensationalism to attract viewers, not quality information or good reporting (Global Issues). Many media outputs have similar aspect to others and only hope to attract viewers through dramatics and aesthetics.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CTRC) has expressed concern regarding the “diversity of voices” being aired in the media. A review will be done very soon, regarding media diversity within Canada. This was sparked by “three deals [that] have dramatically altered the shape of Canada's media industry. In addition to the CHUM acquisition, CanWest MediaWorks Inc. and Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. have joined forces, as have Astral Media Inc. and Standard Radio Inc” (Tuck).
The Canadian government is furthermore looking to implement limitations to media ownership by firstly, regulating cross-media ownership of radio, television and newspaper assets, limiting companies to two of these 3 types of media. Secondly, they plan on preventing companies from owning more than 25 to 33 per cent of the country's cable channels and lastly, a limitation on the growth of cable companies, preventing them from owning multiple cable and satellite TV services (Robertson).
This is the media situation we face right now as a society, Are we getting the proper information? Or are media hegemonies controlling and editing the information we see, and the media outlets we have, to illustrate their own personal ideals? Become informed!
Viacom. “Media Networks”. Our Brands. 2007. 17 Nov. 2007 <http://www.viacom.com/OUR%20BRANDS/MEDIA%20NETWORKS/default.aspx>.
Robertson, Grant. “CRTC airs idea of media limits”. The Globe and Mail, 17 Sept. 2007. 17 Nov. 2007 <http://www.yourmedia.ca/news/2007/070917_crtc_media.html>.
Tuck, Simon. “CRTC concerned about ‘diversity of voices”. The Globe and Mail. 14 March 2007. 17 Nov. 2007 < http://www.yourmedia.ca/news/2007/070314_concen_review.html>.
Shah, Anup. “Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership”. Global Issues. 29 Apr. 2007. 17 Nov. 2007 <http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp>.
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