[LindeBuzoGray]

Right. Land and air telecommunications are almost totally controlled by Verizon and AT&T. They are also some of the largest cable companies, although Comcast is a competitor. Although Comcast owns NBCUniversal, and we can start getting into the media monopoly.

We can go through business by business and see the rise of monopolies and oligopolies. Universal owns half of the US music market - Universal, Sony and Warner own over 80% of the US music market. Accounting is done by the Big Four, advertising by its own Big Four.

Just down the line - consolidation, oligopoly, monopoly. That is what markets produce. Standard Oil reversed its breakup into ExxonMobil, as did the Baby Bells into Verizon and AT&T. Even the government intervention into the monopolies gets reversed.

[lotsofpulp]

What organization has a media monopoly? You have access to the internet, with which you can access media from individuals all the way up to multiple large corporations.

On the national level, there are multiple sources of news (NYT/News Corp/Disney/Comcast/Paramount/WaPo/LATimes/etc). There are lots of sources of professionally and amateur produced entertainment. Apple/Amazon/Comcast/Disney/Sony/WarnerBrosDiscovery/Paramount/etc.

If anything, the monopoly exists on wired broadband to peoples homes, which is usually only available from one seller.

[flerovium]

Ownership:

NYT - billionaire Sulzberger family

WaPo - Jeff Bezos

LA Times - billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong

Disney/Comcast/Paramount represent the consolidation of an industry that used to be hundreds of independent newsrooms into a dozen or so corporations. The murdoch family's New Corp is regularly analyzed as a political force on par with individual elected leaders, if not more so.

Entertainment: Apple/Amazon/Comcast/Disney/Sony/WarnerBrosDiscovery/Paramount

The problem is that the industry has consolidated into a number of players you can count on one hand.