Liberty Exposé: Monopoly on Media
Americans have an unparalleled, seemingly limitless access to an ever-expanding highway of entertainment and information. Countless streaming platforms, podcasts, social media feeds, and cable networks cater a banquet of content waiting to be consumed. The choices are endless.
However, appearances can be deceiving, and America’s all-you-can-eat media buffet may offer fewer choices than the menu suggests. Channel surfing can change what’s on the screen, yet it rarely makes waves beyond the same corporate waters. Logos might differ, anchors may vary, and different programming is tailored for competing audiences, but follow the corporate family tree to its roots, and seemingly unrelated broadcasts and networks lead back to a handful of media conglomerates. Look closely enough, and America’s media landscape starts to resemble a familiar board game.
Monopoly is a great game, just as long as you’re the one winning. As soon as someone buys up Boardwalk and Park Place, it’s only a matter of time before the pieces start to fly and the rest of the table calls it quits. The same principles apply to the beloved board game’s real-world namesake. When too much of an industry falls into too few hands, competition dwindles, consumers lose leverage, and markets are restricted to suit the needs of executives and shareholders rather than the public at large.
Such concentration is troubling in any industry. It’s even more troubling when the product being peddled is bought with a currency beyond dollars and cents. Selling advertising slots may earn media companies a pretty penny; but their most valuable commodity has always been the public’s attention and the power inherent in deciding where their captivated audiences are directed. They influence what stories are told, whose voices are heard, and which events dominate the nation’s headlines. When that power is distilled into a shrinking coalition of media giants, economic consolidation borders dangerously close to editorial conformity, and even the national conversation risks becoming another square on the corporate game board.
Two recent media acquisitions illustrate that America’s next antitrust showdown won’t be fought over oil and steel, but over the networks that shape what Americans see, hear, and believe. Although both have encountered legal roadblocks, Nexstar Media Group’s merger with Tegna and Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery(WBD) demonstrate how rapidly movie studios, streaming services, national networks, local stations, and newsrooms are being gathered under fewer corporate umbrellas. Conservatives have spent years decrying “fake news” and challenging ideological conformity within the press, but if ostensibly competing outlets increasingly answer to the same boardrooms, how long can America’s media marketplace of ideas genuinely remain free?
Content Consolidation
In 1983, 50 companies owned 90% of the American media. Flash forward to 2011, and that same 90% share was reportedly concentrated between only six media conglomerates. Coined as the “Big Six”, the ranking six companies have fluctuated alongside corporate takeovers and restructuring. The current iteration unsurprisingly includes both Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance, with their proposed union potentially knocking the “Big Six” down a number. How did 50 independent companies consolidate into six in less than three decades?
There’s rarely a single culprit behind any complex issue. Yet one of the greatest catalysts arrived in 1996, when Congress moved towards opening the communications industry to greater competition. Signed into law by President Clinton, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 aimed to “let anyone enter any communications business—to let any communications business compete in any market against any other.” Hoping to modernize American’s communication industry amidst the advent of the digital age, the legislation dismantled regulatory barriers and encouraged companies to operate across previously restricted markets. The law eliminated the national limit on radio station ownership, divested local radio limitations, and raised the share of American households one television company could reach from 25% to 35%. Through the law, Congress additionally required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review its media ownership rules and “repeal or modify those it no longer deems to be in the public interest.”
Legislators believed the law would diversify the market, encourage innovation, and expand consumer choice. However, this deregulation was a double-edged sword, as the act fostered an industry environment in which already powerful corporations could acquire their rivals and expand across America’s media landscape. The act arguably “opened a floodgate for mostly locally-owned media to disappear into national conglomerates” and “created a media monopoly that has left the public stranded amid a sea of mergers and takeovers by media giants”, contrary to its stated aims. Local and independent radio was transformed into a “sector dominated by a handful of national players and drained of its spontaneity.” Television gradually followed suit, as “deregulation allowed broadcast networks to purchase cable networks” and “opened the door for the concentration of ownership and power in the industry.” The deregulatory momentum marched onwards, with Congress raising the threshold of national-audience reach limit to 39% in 2004, and subsequent FCC decisions restructuring how ownership was calculated and which combinations were permitted.
This dynamic regulatory environment paved the way for the two media mergers now sitting at the center of America’s antitrust debate. Prior to their Tegna deal, Nexstar was already the “largest owner of local television stations” in the nation. Their $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, after FCC approval, gave Nexstar ownership of “265 television stations in 44 states and Washington”, allowing the company to reach 80% of American households. Despite staggering over the national ownership cap of 39%, the FCC dealt Nexstar a transaction-based regulatory waiver on the condition that the company “divest six stations within two years”. Lawsuits quickly ensued. A coalition of state attorneys general and DirectTV levied antitrust lawsuits against the merger, presenting enough credible concerns for a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction, temporarily halting Nexstar and Tegna’s operational integration. These same plaintiffs recently argued Nexstar violated the injunction by appointing its own executives to Tegna’s board of directors during the injunction’s interim.
The Nexstar-Tegna merger will consolidate local broadcasting, but the proposed acquisition of WBD by Paramount Skydance will consolidate media on a much grander scale. The potential $110 billion merger would create a “media powerhouse”, granting Paramount Skydance ownership of numerous media properties, including HBO, CNN, CBS, TNT, TBS, and others, along with each conglomerate’s respective streaming platforms. The combined company would command an unprecedented share of America’s film, television, news, and streaming markets under a single corporate roof. Despite antitrust criticism, the Department of Justice approved the merger, concluding the acquisition “is not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers” and would create a strong competitor for Netflix and other digital platforms. Twelve state attorneys general were not so convinced, suing to block the merger over antitrust concerns before receiving a temporary restraining order pausing the transaction through August 17th.
From Boardroom to Newsroom
Media conglomerates insist that greater scale is needed to compete against Amazon, YouTube, and other digital juggernauts. They’re not entirely wrong, as local broadcasters and legacy studios continue to confront declines in audience and revenue. But defending the free market doesn’t necessarily mean defending every transaction within it, and any market stops being competitive once its largest players can quickly buy out their opposition before a new contender can step into the ring.
Dangers of rampant media consolidation step beyond the market when boardroom decisions determine what content is broadcast to millions of American households. In September 2025, Jimmy Kimmel! Live! was preempted by Nexstar throughout its ABC affiliates shortly after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr levied regulatory threats over Kimmel’s remarks regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. While Nexstar claimed it acted on its own accord and without government interference, it’s hard to deny the companies own self-interest of maintaining good graces with the FCC ahead of their merger with Tegna. Besides, the Trump administration consistently campaigned in support of the merger, and President Trump had nothing but high praises for Nexstar’s preemption on Truth Social. Regardless of Nexstar’s true reasoning, the episode demonstrates how one corporation could remove programs from dozens of local stations and “roughly a quarter of U.S. TV households”
Paramount Skydance faces similar concerns regarding corporate influence over editorial independence. Under CEO David Ellison, CBS News appointed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. The New Yorker characterizes Weiss’ editorial oversight as a “hostile takeover”, and critics claim her editorial stance leans heavily into a right-wing and pro-Trump bias. These accusations were cast at Weiss after she she withheld a politically sensitive 60 Minutes investigation into the Trump administration’s deportation policy. Although Weiss stated her decision was strictly an editorial choice, then-CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi argued Weiss intentionally shelved the program on political grounds, stating the action was “the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear.” Alleged or not, these detrimental stakes are raised considerably given that Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of WBD would garner them control over CNN, placing two of America’s most prominent news organizations underneath the same corporate leadership.
Conservatives aren’t unfounded in challenging the ideological echo chambers that have alienated millions of Americans from legacy media. But will replacing liberal orthodoxy with a seemingly corporate backed conservatism restore the public’s trust in media or truly broaden public debate? Or will it just drive media bias in the other direction?
Public distrust in the media stems not only from political polarization, but also from the perception that a small group of gatekeepers—corporate or otherwise—decides what stories are told and who they’re told to. Beyond censorship and skewed narratives, unchecked media consolidation into a small circle of powerful players risks diminishing news quality and threatens both our democracy and the freedom of the press. Just because they’ll have a chance to put forward their own “fake news” doesn’t mean conservatives should continue advocating for a further monopoly on media.
