The WGA Strike and Media Consolidation

Kudos to Nikki Finke and her Deadline Hollywood Daily website for her consistently excellent reporting on the WGA strike against the film and television producers. Today, we all know the consolidated media companies are far larger than their film and TV businesses, and a strike against those businesses does not inflict the pain that it did pre-consolidation, enabling them to take a harder line against labor. Indeed, some moguls crow that the strike will potentially benefit other pieces of the conglom. An example: Sony claims that its Playstation console and game sales will increase as the strike drags on.

But as Nikki presciently predicted five years ago, the consolidated media companies are not only far larger than their film and TV biz, but they also control what makes news in the MSM, and they use that control to promote their corporate interests. Case in point is the WGA strike, which is generating a deafening silence in the MSM these days. Last Friday, when police estimated 5,000 writers protested outside the gates of the Fox studio in Century City, the MSM barely mentioned it. Even the hometown LA Times -- which touts its ability to "synergistically" increase its local news coverage to justify its parent Tribune's continued ownership of multiple LA TV stations in violation of FCC rules -- buried the story. Instead, the front page's local story was a piffle about LA chefs worried about their Michelin ratings. If anything gives the lie to this "consolidated media is better media" argument that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is set to invoke next month when he eliminates the long-standing FCC rule that prohibits most newspaper -- TV station cross-ownership in the same local markets, it is Tribune's remarkably lame coverage of the WGA strike in its own LA Times' backyard. To find out what's really going on, skip the house organ MSM. Read Nikki Finke, and the excellent blogging by WGA members on Huffington Post.