Abstract

Editorials

The article presents information on the proposed merger of Capital Cities Communications Inc. and ABC. Together they will make a new leviathan of print, film, radio, video, records, electronics and finance. Capital Cities owns seven commercial TV stations, twelve radio stations, fifty-four cable stations, ten daily newspapers and more than seventy other papers and periodicals, from Women's Wear Daily to Institutional Investor. ABC is more than Dynasty and Monday Night Football. The point of the merger is not necessarily to force competitors out of business but to control the terms by which limited competition is conducted, to pre-empt new fields of endeavor, to command material resources, manpower and money on a global scale, and to manipulate mass culture so that the audience will respond to the needs of the corporate network rather than the other way around.