"The United States has an impressive array of mass communications. There are 1,700 daily newspapers, 11,000 magazines, 9,000 radio and 1,000 television stations, 2,500 book publishers and 7 movie studios. If each of these were operated by a different owner, there would be 25,000 individual media voices in the country. Such a large number would almost guarantee a full spectrum of political and social ideas distributed to the population... But there are not 25,000 different owners.
Today fifty corporations own most of the output of daily newspapers and most of the sales and the audience in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies. The fifty men and women who head these corporations would fit in a large room. They constitute a Private Ministry of Information and Culture."
Ben Badikian