By Carolyn M. Byerly, Ph.D., Guest Author
Professor Emerita, Howard University
It’s curious that the merger between Paramount and Skydance Media has become front page news when reporters have paid little attention to such activities in the 40-plus years since conglomeration began to run rampant in the media world. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the door for industry deregulation across business sectors, and in the media world, that law – passed as stealth legislation by Congress, with little public input – has served the wealthy media owners well.
Consumers who grumble about the glut of reruns on their cable TV stations, or the lack of choice they have in media providers, can thank the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, for allowing mergers over the years. It’s cheaper for those owners to stock their cable stations with reruns and reality TV shows than to invest in new program production. Their revenues roll in, and the bloated salaries of their executives help assure parent companies aren’t going to protest mergers.
And, the rising cost of cell phones equipment and monthly subscriptions? The Sprint-T-Mobile merger a few years ago created a monopsony situation, with that cellular empire able to control prices of phones and service, as well as the wages of its workers in the cellular sector. All the better the profits of wealthy owners.
Mergers have also helped to shrink the number of newspapers, already straining to survive as internet sources grew more popular and their owners sold out to larger conglomerates. Almost no cities in the United States today have two newspapers – indeed, some have none. Commercial television news, owned almost entirely by large national conglomerates, mostly provides the frame for advertisements, sports, and weather, with a few minutes of local, national, and international news.
The troubling reality is that only half a dozen bloated media conglomerates own television and radio stations, internet providers, book publishing companies, and other media enterprises. The owners and executives are 75 percent white and male and hugely wealthy.
Media justice activists – represented by coalitions of grassroots organizations, academic media researchers, and public interest attorneys – have contested these mergers on economic grounds as well as the ways in which media mergers marginalize ownership by women and people of color. Ownership has everything to do with who’s hired and the kind of content that is generated.
The number of media companies owned by women and people of color has shrunken to single digits through conglomeration. Attorneys have sued the FCC repeatedly over gender and racial discrimination, but in 2021, a conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled that the FCC didn’t have to address gender or race in media ownership.
Reporters have done little to follow or report on any of this.
But the recent $16 million that Paramount Global paid to President Donald Trump settled a lawsuit that Trump brought against “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview in the fall of 2024 with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump said made her look better than him. Suddenly, the specter of censorship was on reporters’ radar.
President Trump’s disdain for Harris, a mixed-race woman, was evident through the election season. His lawsuit against CBS aligned with his present determination to eradicate all efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, in U.S. government agencies and private institutions. It figures prominently in the Paramount-Skydance merger.
The FCC – a five-member body that presently has only three members – agreed to allow this merger only after Skydance executive David Ellis agreed not to promote DEI in any of his companies or products. Anna Gomez, the only FCC commissioner appointed by a Democratic president, was the sole dissenter in the deliberations.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, appointed by President Trump, has vowed to eliminate what he calls bias in the media. Bias, in his view, is anything related to DEI. The FCC doesn’t see this requirement as censorship.
Paramount Global is the parent company of CBS, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Music, Nickelodeon Movies, Miramax, United International Pictures, and many other media companies. Combined now with Skydance Media, the new parent company brings additional film and video production companies into the conglomerate.
Media consumers should make no mistake in thinking that media companies exist to entertain and inform them. Their goal is specifically to make money, and for more than 40 years, their owners and investors have been richly rewarded through the cooperation of the FCC.
The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 to license media companies and to assure that they serve the public interest. Commissioners are appointed by the president, with the dominant party controlling the majority on the commission at any given time.
The FCC’s role has evolved in the century since that law was passed, as technology advanced and the range of media companies emerged. Still, there have been few commissioners who have actively advocated for public interest and a diversity of views. Ample evidence suggests this situation won’t improve any time soon.
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Carolyn M. Byerly is a media political economist and professor emerita from Howard University. Media conglomeration in relation to gender and race is among the issues Byerly studies. Her latest book is “Intersectionality, Political Economy, and Media.”
