The article examines shifting patterns of ownership for cable programming services from 1994programming services from to 2003 integration in the cable industry declined, as cable's multi-system operators divested equity in programming services. Meanwhile, broadcast network-owning media conglomerates invested heavily in cable, tripling their holdings among the top 20 most fully distributed cable channels, as well as launching and acquiring dozens of additional, less widely distributed channels. In light of the Federal Communications Commissions' recent attempts to revise rules regarding television ownership, the author argues that while vertical integration has declined, the market power of the broadcast networks has grown by means of a new kind of horizontal integration that reaches across broadcast and cable channels. This shift is reshaping cable as a market which, despite growing product differentiation, is trending toward less competitive conditions that are akin to the broadcast oligopoly. This article shows that these broadcast-cable alliances contributed to the development of the new synergistic practice of repurposing.Media consolidation has long attracted the attention of media industry observers, including scholars, journalists, policymakers, economists, special interest groups, and activists. Recent evidence suggests that media consumers are also concerned about the ongoing growth of the few largest media corporations, and federal regulators' amenability toward their growth: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received an
Increasingly violent media shows no signs of driving away audiences. Cynthia Chris explores the possibility of redemptive arcs as ripped-from-the-headlines stories play out on TV, but with happy endings, and, in the end, she still reaches for the remote.
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