Rogers, We Have Lift Off

Media/Hegemony

     As I look at my HBC rewards card, I realize that it can be used at a number of stores owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. At the plaza at which I work, there used to be a Home Outfitters, which was owned by HBC. Unfortunately, the store closed and was replaced by a SportChek, a subsidiary of The Forzani Group Ltd. The plaza also has a Mark’s Work Warehouse, but my rewards card does not work there because the store is no longer owned by HBC, but by Canadian Tire, another business conglomerate. As I begin to realize that all the stores at my plaza are owned by huge business I begin to question what was going on? In researching various stores, I began to realize that they were all owned by a small number of major corporations.

     In the same manner almost all retail chains are owned by huge corporations, there is also a concentration of ownership with various media outlets and technologies. When I think of Rogers Communications, for example, I immediately think of telephones. A corporation that provides the public with the ability to communicate with one another via cell phone or telephone. Little did I know,  Rogers Communications is an enormous corporation with an alarming amount of power.

They own telephone companies, radio and cable station, television networks, publishing companies, and sports teams. You can not go anywhere in Canada without seeing the Rogers emblem being displayed on something. Check out this awesome site to see a long list of Roger Communications holdings. (http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=rogers )

     The idea of all these companies trying to make it to the top has to do with the 'rip, mix and burn' theory proposed by Lessig.[1] Companies know what the public wants. The only thing that determines the difference is the way of delivering their findings. They rip the culture around them, mix their ideas into something new and creative, then burn it into the culture the best they can.          

     To give you an example of how much power Rogers has lets go through a quick run down of how Rogers is ingrained in many aspects of my life. I recently saw my parent’s bills for things such as telephone, internet, and cable. I expected to see three different bills from three different companies. Nope, it all came in one nice package, marked with the Rogers emblem at the top right of the bill. After looking at the bill, I go to relax and watch television.  I began to watch SportsNet to see how the local baseball team did. The reporter announced, “Next on Rogers’ SportsNet, we see how the Toronto Blue Jays faired against the Yankees as the battled it out at the Rogers Centre” AHHHHHH! You will always be known as the SkyDome in my heart. Okay, no problem. I'll call my friend on my cell phone to discuss how Rogers dominates my life. Upon turning on my cell phone, the Rogers symbol appears as the phone boots up. At that point, I had to admit there was no escaping from Rogers, the large corporation. 

     While, there may not appear to be any harm with large corporations controlling many media outlets. However, I think it is difficult to find objective, unbiased news when the majority of publications and broadcasts in our society are owned by a select few media moguls. For example, on CityTv the often promote and show commercials for the radio station CHIFI.   However, the average viewer may not realize that CityTv and CHFI are owned by the same parent company.  Thus, parents companies can utilize a variety of its assists to serve their best interests. This results in the fabrication of culture by major media companies.

     Another problem with a concentration of ownership, is the fact that most of our information is coming from one source, and there is no room for diversity from other sources. We believe that we have all these different sources of media that offer us semi-objective facts. However, what’s really happening is that we do have a variety of media sources, but they are all owned by a relatively small number of large media companies and this enables them to put their messages out over a variety of media sources, promoting their messages and ideas even further. I don’t think that cross-media ownership is beneficial to the public because we are lead to believe that we are receiving a variety of viewpoints in the media but, really, we are only receiving a select few, over and over again.

Work Cited

[1]  Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005. 24.