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There are thousands of television channels. As far as most people are concerned, when it comes to search, there is only Google.

adventured 11y ago
There are not thousands of television channels in the US that will broadcast political content such that presidential candidates can push their message across them. The average American household has access to just 150-200 TV channels, total. Most of those would never carry anything related to the election. The vast majority of those are specific content carriers: movies, music, on-demand, sports. You're down to having a few dozens channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, local affiliates etc) that a candidate can push through. There are 2,200x tv stations in the US. Most of those are small, local stations with zero national or regional reach. There are thousands of online sites and platforms that at least have as large of an audience as those stations. All of those sites can be reached by almost anyone in the US, which is not true of the local TV stations. Further, there is nothing even remotely like: Reddit, Twitter, Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook, et al. in the television realm, where just about anyone can reach a national audience if their message resonates (and do so for free). There is also nothing like the app options that are available online, whether Snapchat, Instagram, or voter reach apps like NationBuilder.
- VLM 11y ago
  More importantly those 150-200 channels or few dozen political content channels are owned by a VERY small number of very large corporations. Five or so.
Reedx 11y ago
But they're owned by about 6 companies: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/media... The web is vastly more open and representative.
- kuschku 11y ago
  In America, yes. Not everywhere else. Why do we have to make most of the western world worse, just because the result is better than what currently exists in the US?
deleted 11y ago
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adventured 11y ago

There are not thousands of television channels in the US that will broadcast political content such that presidential candidates can push their message across them. The average American household has access to just 150-200 TV channels, total. Most of those would never carry anything related to the election. The vast majority of those are specific content carriers: movies, music, on-demand, sports. You're down to having a few dozens channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNBC, MSNBC, local affiliates etc) that a candidate can push through. There are 2,200x tv stations in the US. Most of those are small, local stations with zero national or regional reach. There are thousands of online sites and platforms that at least have as large of an audience as those stations. All of those sites can be reached by almost anyone in the US, which is not true of the local TV stations. Further, there is nothing even remotely like: Reddit, Twitter, Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook, et al. in the television realm, where just about anyone can reach a national audience if their message resonates (and do so for free). There is also nothing like the app options that are available online, whether Snapchat, Instagram, or voter reach apps like NationBuilder.

VLM 11y ago
More importantly those 150-200 channels or few dozen political content channels are owned by a VERY small number of very large corporations. Five or so.

Reedx 11y ago

But they're owned by about 6 companies: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/media... The web is vastly more open and representative.

kuschku 11y ago
In America, yes. Not everywhere else. Why do we have to make most of the western world worse, just because the result is better than what currently exists in the US?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]