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Karen Wilson, Chaney Sims, Bill Sims, and Cicily Wilson in "An American Love Story."
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s it has entered middle age, television has changed so rapidly that it bears little resemblance to the medium's infancy, except in one key respect: the concentration of power in a handful of large companies.
This was a year when the big TV networks got bigger and dreamed of being biggest.
To some outside observers, though, the renewed domination of television by a few powerful corporations felt more like a nightmare. They worried about diminished choices for consumers, diminished opportunities for smaller competitors, and an overall stranglehold on information exercised by major conglomerates.
Clearly, with their audiences shrinking and their revenues dwindling, the TV networks had been feeling the urge to merge. They wasted little time moving in that direction once the Federal Communications Commission changed its rules to allow television companies to own more than one station in a given market.
That led quickly to the blockbuster media marriage of the year: a $37 billion merger between Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. If approved by the FCC, it will be the largest media deal in history.
The Viacom-CBS merger would create a media juggernaut that could command a huge share of the money spent on advertising each year. It would also result in some strange corporate bedfellows by uniting venerable, gray-haired CBS with such hip, young channels as MTV and Nickelodeon.
Clearly, CBS chief Mel Karmazin and Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, the architects of the deal, are hoping for opportunities for cross-promotion and ''synergy,'' with, for instance, CBS serving as a television home for films produced by Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures.
But in weighing the merger, the FCC has to decide whether to ease its rule against dual ownership of broadcast networks so the new Viacom-CBS entity can own the UPN network, in which Viacom holds a 50 percent stake. If the FCC allows it, that would mean that two of the six broadcast networks - along with many of their local affiliates - would be owned by a single company.
Though not as sweeping as Viacom-CBS, the September deal between NBC and Paxson Communications Corporation, the owner of the Pax TV network, also is freighted with implications.
NBC, which is owned by General Electric, agreed to pay $400 million for a 32 percent stake in Paxson, which boasts a lineup of 120 owned or affiliated stations that reach 75 percent of the nation's TV audience. Under the terms of the deal, NBC can take operating control of Pax TV in 2002.
In other words, NBC is on the verge of having a second national channel for programs that now air on the Peacock Network. Moreover, as with the Viacom-CBS deal, NBC's deal with Paxson will greatly expand its reach and its muscle with advertisers.
To be sure, there were times this year when a company felt like consolidating rather than expanding. For example, the Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC, chose to combine its TV production studio, which had been independent of ABC, with the network's entertainment division. The ensuing power struggle ended with the resignation of ABC Entertainment president Jamie Tarses, the first woman to head a network entertainment division.
But in general, a bigger-is-better ethos prevailed. The high-profile agreements involving CBS and NBC were just the latest proof that control over the production and distribution of television programs now resides in fewer and fewer hands.
Consider: Even before the Pax deal, General Electric owned not just NBC but also CNBC, MSNBC, the Bravo channel, and American Movie Classics. The News Corp. controls the Fox network and several cable offspring, including Fox News Channel and Fox Family Channel. Time Warner owns CNN, HBO, and the WB network. The Walt Disney Co. owns not just ABC but also a host of cable channels, including ESPN and The History Channel.
As the year drew to a close, talk of another blockbuster deal bubbled up when News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch claimed that General Electric had offered NBC to Time-Warner for $25 billion. GE and NBC immediately denied that the network was for sale.
Nonetheless, speculation regarding that or other potential blockbuster deals is unlikely to abate. This is one business that is used to changing channels.
