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Comment by TechBro8615 | Hacker News Reader

The largest media companies are loss-leaders for telecom conglomerates. They don't actually need to be profitable.

Could you expand on this? I don't get it.

I mean that Comcast, ATT and Verizon collectively own a large portion of US media corporations – including CNN and MSNBC. You can quibble about the semantics of ownership, but the control of media is concentrated in a small cluster of last century's monopolies.

There is an infographic here: https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9...

> You can quibble about the semantics of ownership

AT&T spun out Time Warner and merged it with Discovery because it had no idea what to do with it or how to run a media company.

Comcast only bought NBC Universal in 2011. Only one major media company (and not even the biggest one) could arguably be a loss leader for a telco. The rest are doing their own thing.

Are you basically saying the large media companies are kept alive to keep people on cable?

I don't think it has to serve a purpose other than power projection for the rich owners. I'd say that owning all media is the best bang for your buck if you want to to convert money to power.

Big media exists to define the overton window for the plebs.

I believe the OP is referencing the fact that over the years, the cable tv/telephone groups have been buying up production houses (i.e., Time-Warner owned by AT&T, NBCUniversal owned by Comcast, etc.) and is implying that the owner (AT&T, Comcast) owns the production house (Time-Warner, NBCUniversal) not to directly profit from the production house output per. se., but to provide content with which to use to incentivize people into paying for their other media distribution products.

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