I'm not quite sure why people are making a big deal about MSM maven Mark Halperin recognizing what many of us have been calling the 'Mighty Wurlitzer' for years:
...[T]he conservative new media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by old-media decision-makers is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative new media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the old media find it irresistible.
What struck me as odd was the way he defined 'old' and 'new'. I mean, that's not how most of us would define these two groups since they're both very much part of traditional broadcast media.
In fact, the only way they got to where they are today is thanks to the U.S. government. There was nothing inevitable or intrinsic about it. The U.S. Government allowed a conglomeration of traditional media with single corporations owning huge swaths of it -- something that would have been illegal in an earlier era. It was only a matter of time before such entities would start reflecting the interests of its owners creating an environment where right-wing radio began to flourish -- and left-wing radio was nowhere to be seen.
It's ownership that defined the market and not the other way around. In any case, another 'benefit' of deregulation.
