Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Hispanic media behemoth The FCC may be facing bipartisan opposition for its relaxation of media ownership rules, but it keeps forging ahead by allowing media companies to combine. It recently gave approval (in a 3-2 partisan vote) for the merger of TV company Univision and radio chain Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation (HBC), and did it without imposing onlty minor conditions on the merger. As the Wall Street Journal (9/23/2003) put it: The deal will reshape the nation's rapidly growing and lucrative Hispanic media market by combining at least 63 of the 65 radio stations owned or operated by Hispanic Broadcasting with Univision's two broadcast-television networks, cable network, record labels and 53 TV stations. It will leave the combined company with control of the most popular Spanish-language cable channel, broadcast-TV network, record label and radio network. This is a lesson on the critical nature of defined categories. If you see, as the FCC does, the new entity as just another broadcasting company, it is still a minor player compared to the likes of GE, Disney, Viacom, and the rest. But if you look at the category of Spanish-language media as the relevant segment, then the FCC has allowed a behemoth to come into existence, dominating both news and advertising. The new company will control some 70% of the growing Spanish-language advertising market in the US. That's approaching monopoly, but then, it's all in how the categories break down. 8:09:47 PM

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