PowerPoint Presentation Slide 1

The Critical Political Economy View: Lost in Cyberspace by Dwayne Winseck

• Sees Intellectual Property Disputes as masking the larger problem: oligopoly of power and control
• Internet now dominated by big players, not an ideal perfect competition
• Convergence not new: 19th and 20th century waves and predicted in Canada since 1971
• In Canada:
• Rogers allied with Microsoft and AT&T
• CanWest: news and TV and radio
• Bell Globemedia, CTV,Expressvue, Globe and Mail and Sympatico, largest ISP

Impacts of Cross Media Ownership

• Now vertically and horizontal companies can control all aspects of message
• Should those who control the medium also control the message?

• Yes: allows economies of scale, more money reinvested in content, better assumption of risk, more choice and convenience for consumers
• No: debt means less investment in content, loss of jobs, avoidance of risk, less choice and higher prices for consumers ( Winseck, 326)

Canadian Argument

• Canada does have more choice among services
• Highest level of cable, cell, Internet penetration in G-8
• Chronic shortage/ market failure in high cost production
• Shrinking public investment in non commercial or community media
• Indicators News
• More news services, fewer private foreign news bureaus, more reliance on wire services; diminishing number of jobs
• Indicator Entertainment
• Digital channels not allied with big Canadian companies on verge of bankruptcy
• Can’t get carried by cable companies, or carried at too high a wholesale rate
• Services high level of repetition( estimated more than 66% reruns)
• Lag of asymmetry: late on video file swapping, speed of video downloads

Winseck’s conclusion

• In short, there is a resilience in the “old media” that will not yield
• Incumbents battle new entrants and either buy them up or forge partnerships, or force them out of business
• People still mostly rely on TV for their political information
• Internet works to extend and conserve existing market dominance in cyberspace