A Foundation in Broadcasting

Overview

Broadcasting is concerned with the distribution of audio and video signals which transmit programs to an audience. For any programs to be broadcasted there needs to be a targeted audience. Audiences can vary widely, from the general public, to specific sub-audiences, such as children, women, elder people, etc. Broadcasting forms a very large segment of the mass media and encompasses numerous broadcasting systems such as radio, televisions, newspapers, magazines and the more recent internet channels.

Because broadcasting systems play such an important role in the survival of mass media corporations, there has been, especially over the past 30 years, a fierce competition among those companies to gain the control of broadcasting systems.

Mass media ownership and broadcasting are very closely linked. Mass Media Companies have always been fighting over the control of the systems that would enable them to reach the largest audience but also for the control of new emerging broadcast systems in more localized areas.

The concentration of media ownership has indeed raised many issues and debates. Many non profit organizations such as ours have tried to raise awareness among the public about the downfalls of such an industry structure.

Firstly, with only a few companies owning most of the media, the public has a limited access to diverse opinions and voices. It has been harder for the general public to concert various non related information sources in order to build their own perception of the events taking place around them.

Secondly, most of the large media corporations, like any other private corporations are profit oriented businesses. Always searching ways to cut costs down has led many companies to restrict their amounts on money allocated to broadcasting systems in areas with low population density and to topics concerning minorities. This results in lower possibilities for minorities and local communities to send their message and catch the attention of the global public. This situation, where minorities are allowed to express their opinion but not always capable to do, is related to freedom of speech that is being taken away from some segment of the population.

A third problem is that those media often get funding from large corporations dominating other industries or from political parties. When the amount of funds brought by those companies becomes relevant, those third parties have then gained some way to pressure the media conglomerates and may influence what is broadcasted or get stories that do not serve their interests to be suppressed.

Last but not least, with an oligopolistic structure, where only a few companies dominate such wide areas, the media industry had been subject to low market based competition, leading to little innovation and increases in prices.

Since one of the goals of the CAC is make the people aware of the fact that they can easily be manipulated by the media, we will start off by describing a few techniques used by broadcasting channels to bend our perceptions of facts and events:

• Nationalism: this technique is used to discredit opposing arguments by appealing to nationalistic pride or memory of past accomplishments. Nationalism can also appeal to fear or dislike another country.

• Distraction by scapegoat: technique in which the weakest opponent is considered as the main opponent. It then becomes a lot easier to discredit it in front of the audience.
• Semantics: technique which uses pleasant terms and expressions in reports in an attempt to cover the truth. (Example: state rights instead of slavery).
• Marginalization: technique that only attaches attention to main sources of information. Reporters using this technique deliberately ignore or discredit objections or arguments coming from what they consider fringe sources of information.
• Demonisation of the opposition: techniques that associates opposing views with an out group or hated group.
• Distraction by phenomenon: technique that distracts the attention of the audience away from an issue by spending more news time on other, not so important issues.

These are only a few of the many techniques that can be used by the mass Medias to manipulate our perception of events trough diverse broadcasting systems. It is important for the public to be aware of those techniques in order to identify them and become more cautious in analyzing the information being broadcasted.

Broadcasting and Media ownership in Canada: What is the current situation?

Canadians are big users of the various broadcasting systems available to them. Canadians spend almost as much time listening to the radio than they do watching television. For instance, in 2001, a Canadian listed to an average of 21.7 hours of radio per week and on average between 22.2 and 26.1 hours of television weekly.

In Canada, there is one public, government funded broadcasting corporation, facing competition from a few private broadcasting companies.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) (In French La societe Radio Canada), was funded in 1936 (and then in 1952 for the television part) and is the country’s national public radio and television broadcaster. The radio services offered by the CBC include: CBC Radio One, CBC Radio 2, CBC Radio 3, La Première Chaîne, Espace musique and the international radio service Radio Canada International. Television operations include CBC Television, Télévision de Radio-Canada, CBC Newsworld, le Réseau de l’information, ARTV (part ownership), Documentary Channel and CBC Country Canada. The CBC operates services for the Canadian Arctic under the names CBC North and Radio Nord Québec. In order to reach the largest audience, and being owned by the government of a multilingual country, the CBC offers programming in English, French and eight aboriginal languages.

However, like it was discussed earlier, competition in the broadcasting industry is fierce and the CBC has been under increasing financial and competitive pressures. Firstly, the CBC has seen its funding from private donors and from the federal government decrease over the past 15 years. This, unfortunately, has been happening at the same time the dramatic increase of the media concentration in the Canadian broadcasting system. Most of the broadcasting systems are now owned by a few companies including CTV Globemedia, Canwest Global, Rogers, Shaw, Astral, Newcap and Quebecor. Those companies, who a variety of broadcasting systems, have access to a large base of private funding; have the possibility of charging their users fees and also benefit from large revenues from companies advertising through their systems. Another source of competition has been, since the mid 1990s, the increased popularity among users of the specialty-pay sector, a sector in which the CBC is not performing yet.

Like in most countries, there are regulations over broadcasting systems ownership in Canada. In particular the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CTRC) regulates the radio and television ownership throughout Canada. Even though the CTRC does not govern the ownership of other systems such as newspapers or internet channels, those are usually taken in consideration when making decisions pertaining to a licensee’s broadcasting operations.

Since Canada, is a large territory with many few populated areas, there are regions where the population could not support various independent broadcasting systems (numerous newspapers, television channels, radio stations…). This is because those systems were all competing for the same small advertising revenues and federal government budget allocations directed towards those areas. This is why, some kind of media consolidation has been allowed in Canada. In the mid 19990s, the CTRC also began allowing large companies to own several television channels is widely populated areas such as Toronto, Vancouver an Montreal.

Those decreasing restrictions on media concentration in Canada have naturally led to the problem that our organization is trying to find solutions to: a smaller base of sources of knowledge and information and the obvious lack of diverse opinions and local news coverage.

If one is to look at television channels ownership, one will observe that as of 2007, almost all Canadian television stations are owned by national media companies. This ownership structure has various implications. Firstly, because those companies have access to such a large audience, they attract a lot of advertising companies who perceive them as one of the most effective way to reach such a large audience. This in turn brings high revenues to the major Canadian companies and diverts those funds from local television channels for which it has now become increasingly hard to survive independently. Local channels now often end up closing or being bough over by major national corporations. Secondly, since those companies now have access to a country wide audience, they have the possibility to control the information viewed by an entire nation. They have now the possibility to manipulate the population of an entire country in the same direction. Whether they decide to do so depends widely on who is running those companies and has the last work on which televisions programs are aired. This however would not be such an important problem if there was a healthy level of competition in the industry, but it is unfortunately not the case. With only a few companies controlling the main channels, there are few other channels where viewers can turn themselves to, when questioning themselves about the information received by a specific corporation.

Another problem of the concentration in the ownership of most television channels is that most channels are directly operated by their associated networks. In order to cut cots, the large conglomerates have often cut down on the time and the funding allocated to the programming of local news and programs. In some instance, those have even been eliminated. With media companies increasingly focusing on national news, there remains little sources from which the local community to can draw information relating to local events.

Also, because the main media companies own various kinds of broadcasting systems, users may think that they are get information from different independent sources, but they are not aware that those systems are commonly owned by a common entity.

Recognizing the possibility of such media manipulation, some regulations by the CTRC and the Canadian government have been implemented. Companies that own both television and newspapers assets are under strict controls on the extent to which they can merge their operations. Also, since 2008, the CTRC limited corporations to owning no more than two types of media in a given market and instituted a market new market share cap: not company can own broadcasting assets that would give them access to more than 45% of the country’s television viewership.

It appears therefore that actions have been taken to try to protect users from the increase in media concentration. However, is it enough? The major companies still have access to larger funds; can advertise themselves more intensively, which results in larger audience. This in turn distracts users from other systems that are eventually forced to close. Even though companies do not own more sources of information, the result for users is the same, for they have now access only to large corporations controlling broadcasting systems around the nations.

This is why it is important for each and every one of us to be aware of the possibility that our perception of various events may have been altered by the large media companies. It is our duty to search for alternative ways to inform ourselves. Our company has two main purposes. Firstly, we wish to make you aware of the various means used by the media to manipulate your opinions and perceptions of events. We believe that the most effective way to get our audience to react to this issue is to educate them on the current situation. Secondly, our long term goal is to continuously update you on the various ways to gather and share information around the globe in an unbiased way.