[Alberta's Child]

Think of the example that I provided involving the conglomerate that owns both a record label and a group of radio stations. This "vertical ownership" effectively creates a closed market in the record business -- and places a new musical act at a competitive disadvantage against one that is getting a lot of "free" air time with a large record label owned by a conglomerate. It also forces the new musical act to deal with an ever-shrinking number of record labels, which results in artists being at a disadvantage in their dealings with the record labels.

The original complaint against monopolies is that they resulted in a stale, uncompetitive business environment. If you listen to almost any radio station these days, the word "stale" perfectly describes what you are hearing.

I live in the New York radio market, and over the last couple of years the radio market has gotten rather bizarre. First, we started hearing advertisements on FM music stations for AM news or talk stations (the stations were owned by the same conglomerate). In the last few weeks, I've started hearing ads on one FM music station for another FM music station that plays a different type of music.

I'm not an old-fashioned person by nature, but radio was far more interesting when the radio stations didn't all sound the same.

[Steve0113]

In the last few weeks, I've started hearing ads on one FM music station for another FM music station that plays a different type of music.

In the Washington, DC, market, an all-news radio station has been swapping ads with a classical music station. As far as I know, they have different owners, but then again they aren't exactly competing for the same listeners at the same times. The ads recommend listening to the news station while commuting, and the music station in the office or house.