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To: UnwashedPeasant
Along the same lines, I've always wondered why wealthy conservatives don't band together to purchase controlling interests in major newspapers, TV networks, radio stations, magazines and the like. That would really result in a "fair and balanced" mass media.
13 posted on 01/29/2012 7:59:58 PM PST by Salvey
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To: Salvey; All
13 posted on Sunday, January 29, 2012 9:59:58 PM by Salvey: “Along the same lines, I've always wondered why wealthy conservatives don't band together to purchase controlling interests in major newspapers, TV networks, radio stations, magazines and the like. That would really result in a “fair and balanced” mass media.”

The media landscape today is in such chaos that it's not a good business investment. Even with the massive shareholder losses of the last half-decade, prices are still in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a major newspaper, and people with that kind of money tend to be motivated by short-to-medium term investment returns, not long-term ideological issues.

One of my former newspaper companies, a chain which is fairly conservative, is in bankruptcy. Another had seen its stock price drop from the mid-$20 per share range down to 3 cents per share in a period of two years, and it's now hovering in the dime-to-quarter range. The Washington Times is in major economic trouble and would be in even worse shape if it were not for private dollars coming from Sun Myung Moon's church connections.

Put another way — Newt Gingrich has lots of money (I read his tax return online after he released it) but it takes someone with the money of Mitt Romney to buy even a failing newspaper like the Boston Globe, and if you've got that kind of money you usually didn't get it by putting ideology above profitability.

28 posted on 01/30/2012 5:48:49 AM PST by darrellmaurina
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