The effects of ownership concentration on media content

This dissertation addresses the academic debate over the impact of industrial concentration on the social role of the media, as well as the policy debate over the wisdom of media ownership caps, which were greatly relaxed in the 1990s. One could view the media from the perspective of the labor that works in them or the firms who purchase advertising in them, but the thing that attracts such great attention to the media is the fact that through their content they serve as conduits for politics and culture. Therefore in assessing the affects of corporate ownership I focus on content. Specifically, I address two hypotheses, drawn respectively from political economy and production of culture: (1) Large corporate media are biased towards the political and financial interests of their owners; (2) Large corporate media are less creative than their peers.; I perform a total of four empirical studies, two addressing each question. One study focuses on movie reviews appearing in print periodicals. The other three use data on what songs radio stations play. My results reject the first hypothesis, derived from political economy, but provide qualified support for the second hypothesis, derived from production of culture literature. In other words, it appears that corporate media are boring but fair.