COMM 150: Media trends in the morning news

So I'm going to open my email, and before I even get to my inbox there's a couple of Associated Press stories on the Yahoo! News site that relate to trends we're studying this semester.

Here's one on new- vs. old-media competition ... a fall-off in the number of cable subscribers that may (or may not) reflect internet TV services:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Cable companies have been losing TV subscribers at an ever faster rate in the last few months, and satellite TV isn't picking up the slack.

That could be a sign that Internet TV services such as Netflix and Hulu are finally starting to entice people to cancel cable, though company executives are pointing to the weak economy and housing market for now. ...

And so on. Like I said, we'd better read it.

Here's another TV story. The Nielsen ratings show Fox News, as usual, blew out the other TV networks on election night audience share. If my theory is correct, it's more evidence that niche broadcasting works. The AP reports:

The Nielsen Co. said Thursday that Fox had 6.94 million viewers during the 10 p.m. hour Tuesday. NBC was second with 6.27 million, followed by CBS with 5.86 million and ABC with 5.53 million. CNN had 2.59 million viewers during that key hour and MSNBC had 2.04 million.

And at the bottom of the story, another trend - concentration of ownership - in AP's usual filler in the last graf:

Fox is owned by News Corp.; ABC is a unit of The Walt Disney Co.; MSNBC and NBC are subsidiaries of General Electric Co.; CBS is owned by CBS Corp.; CNN is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

Concentration of ownership. Convergence. Niche targeting. That's how the world is changing.