Who are the media giants?.

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As we saw at the Super Bowl, they were under one umbrella. Too bad they can't swollow up our Neo Con government.

THE VIACOMESE NATION

Just in case you missed it because of yesterday's US holiday, here's an excerpt from Republican William Safire's jeremiad against media concentration in the New York Times. The FIve Sisters deserves to be read in full:

"If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world? Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.

The media giant known as Viacom-CBS-MTV just showed us how it controls both content and communication of the sexiest Super Bowl. The five other big sisters that now bestride the world are (1) Murdoch-FoxTV-HarperCollins-WeeklyStandard-NewYorkPost-LondonTimes-Direc TV; (2) GE-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (3) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (4) Disney-ABC-ESPN; and (5) the biggest cable company, Comcast.

As predicted here in an "Office Pool" over two years ago, Comcast has just bid to take over Disney (Ed Bleier, then of Warner Bros., was my prescient source). If the $50 billion deal is successful, the six giants would shrink to five, with Disney-Comcast becoming the biggest.

Would Rupert Murdoch stand for being merely No. 2? Not on your life. He would take over a competitor, perhaps the Time-Warner-CNN-AOL combine, making him biggest again. Meanwhile, cash-rich Microsoft - which already owns 7 percent of Comcast and is a partner of GE's MSNBC - would swallow both Disney-ABC and GE-NBC. Then there would be three, on the way to one. ... http://tinyurl.com/2z2vn

Quote: NY Times.