Reply #11

If you believe Wikipedia, Comcast states BBC World News is a very frequently requested channel, and on the cable systems where they do have BBC World News, "it is one of the highest performing news and information stations and has generated a large and positive response from customers." (Wiki quote). I think a lot of people on DU would say that the BBC demonstrates a fairer point and less biased point of view than the CNNs, MSNBC's and definitely the "Fox News"es of the world.

But I feel I need to pick apart on your facts on a subject I am familiar with... terrestrial broadcasting.

There are 14,728 AM & FM radio transmitters licensed in the USA. 3417 are educational. This leaves 11311 on a commercial license. Religious broadcasters (BBN, K-Love, etc) have a number of commercial licenses, as do some larger NPR-affiliated stations. There are smaller groups - not the Clear Channels (Bain), not the CBS's, nor the Cumuluses (Bain)... that have a good few stations, and I know stations that operate just as that station alone. That figure of 9000 to me is a bit on the high end.

TV - 1500? I think that's high end too, since there are 1774 full power TV stations, of which 392 are on an educational license. I know at least 250 stations that are not owned by one of those 3 corporations. This gets us to 1130-ish full power TV stations that could be owned by these three.

There are also 2172 low powered TV stations. Lots are for religious broadcasting, shopping at home channels, true proper home-town TV, and some are used by smaller TV companies to provide a major network station in a market that does not have that major network and not enough full-powered stations to give carriage to the Big 4. (Of course in digital, that's not so much of a problem).

I would believe these figures readily if it was not isolated to terrestrial broadcasting. Cable TV channels? yep. International assets? Yep. But not for US broadcast alone.