Diversity in Television watched, Music listened to and Print read by younger and older adults in the United becomes nearly impossible due to media oligopolies dominating in the 21st century

Media Oligopolies occur when a few large companies buy out smaller companies so that they become more powerful in the media market. The emergence of media giants has especially become very popular in television media. Now days when viewers watch television, most likely, the networks are all under one big media giant. In The Journal of Economic Issues, AOL-time warner, Disney, Viacom, Newscorp, Bertelsmann, and genetic Electric are discussed as the big six media giants. Aol-time warner plays an even bigger role in music production, movie production, book and magazine publishing. The companies seem like competitors but they are actually partners. In the table shown below, Media concentration is displayed by listing the industries, number of top firms controlling the industry and how much control they have in the industry.

Comparison done on shows watched by two female college student show that Viacom and Disney control majority of the networks favorite by them

A comparison between a friend and I was done on the type of shows we watched. When comparing shows, she listed that her favorite shows were Boy meets World, Scandal, Grey’s anatomy, How to get away with Murder, Chasing life and Reba. The shows she listed were mainly found on the networks ABC, Abc Family and Nick. The shows I listed as my favorite were How to get away with murder, Grey’s anatomy, Scandal, Catfish and Bet talk shows, Wendy Williams and the real.  After listing the shows we watched, we saw that our lists contained majority of the same shows. For example, both of our favorite drama shows, Grey’s Anatomy, How to get away with Murder and Scandal, are all on ABC. Not only are these shows on the same channel, they are directed by the same person too, Shonda Rhimes. Abc is one of the broadcasting networks owned by Disney, so Disney is getting profit because of Thursday night’s popularity.  In addition to this, Disney owns Abc family as well so all of our favorite shows were owned by the same media-cooperation.  Disney is not the only cooperation that owns the networks we watched, Viacom Media networks owned the other networks I enjoyed which where MTV and bet.  Our lists of television shows made us realize that regardless of the networks we watched, they all originated from the same place

Media diversity in Television shows, music and reading genres is more likely to be absent if viewers, listeners and readers have similar preferences, cultures and backgrounds

Not only was media in television compared, Music we listened to and Prints we read was compared as well. The genres of music I listened to were mainly pop, hip hop and R&B, while the genres of music my friend listened to were mainly African, pop, Christian and Acoustic. We did have similar music genre preferences when it came to music. We then compared the artists we listened to in the categories we had in common. We both listened to Beyoncé and Ariana Grande; two stars whose music videos frequently shown Viacom’s MTV music channel.  Finally, we compared what we read; our commonality was that we both read a lot of magazines. Some of these magazines included People, US weekly and Essence and Life. After doing some research, I found out that Time Incorporated owns the US weekly, Essence and Life magazines meaning it is a media-publishing

giant as well.

After analyzing all of our lists, I noticed that my friend and I had a lot of things in common because we were had similar cultures. We are both African American young female adults who attend University of Maryland. Even though we had a few minor differences, majority of our shows were from the same channels because of our interest. If I had compared my list with someone who was an elderly Hispanic woman or a young white man or even my little sister, the list of shows, readings and music would have not been so similar. A study comparing Content Preferences between younger and older adults showed that older adults are more likely to watch news on the television while younger adults are more likely to watch sitcoms. Both Older and Younger adults have no preference when it comes to violence on television.
It is very important that viewers start to become more diverse with the shows they watch, music they listen to and prints they read. In the future, these oligopolies will continue to merge. It will probably get to the point where it becomes one media cooperation controls every print, television network and music company.  One solution to diffuse the oligopoly is for government intervention in order to stop these companies from getting larger. Until then, media diversity will continue to be limited.