Dean Starkman Writes About Media Consolidation for Traffic magazine

Resident CMDS fellow and visiting faculty at the School of Public Policy, Dean Starkman has authored a piece on the current state of  media consolidation entitled "The Ever-Expanding Media Giants" for Traffic magazine. Examining all media acquisitions over the past decade and the state of the media industry, Starkman writes that "media makes more money today than at any time in human history — $2.4 trillion worldwide, if you count platform companies such as AT&T as well as content companies like the Walt Disney Co. And that figure is rising fast due to an unprecedented appetite for media products: The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the average American spent 3,532 hours consuming media in 2009, an astounding 9.7 hours per day. (The number implies that media consumption overlaps with more than 60 percent of waking hours). Media choices, which used to be defined by the number of channels on the television or the radio stations on a dial, have seemingly become limitless."

Dean Starkman's article and the accompanying infrographic created by the Tom agency is available here.