CanWest to buy Alliance Atlantis
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It was all in the news today: CanWest Global paired up with Goldman Sachs Capital to buy Alliance Atlantis. The price tag is $2.3 billion. Those are numbers that most us just try to imagine without a real sense of the value.
Anyway, when reading about it there was one word that struck me. Consolidation. The deal will “consolidate” the media market… or something like that. What does that mean? I have no idea. What is there to be consolidated? A big fish is getting eaten by a bigger fish. The bigger fish may get consolidated. The media (in general, since this is a plural noun) will live with it.
Somehow there is a similar word that would rather come to my mind: conglomerate. One big conglomerate to serve all our media needs, news needs, entertainment needs. Let the CRTC worry about the percentages of Canadian ownership and other technicalities. I am more worried about our lessening choices. Whenever a merger (acquisition, purchase, etc.) of this magnitude happens everybody wins - except we, who pay the price for it. Less players on the market means less choices, less options. One day we may end up with one single provider that will decide for us what to watch, what to listen, what to know.
Just for the record: I don’t like Alliance Atlantis better than CanWest or vice-versa. Plus, CanWest might even be considered as “ours” here in Winnipeg. Despite that I like better than anything else to have choices. Especially in this age of infotainment.
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