available to every viewer for free, aside from payments for content, with zero cost of add- g even more channels if the first billion get used up, and with no one permitted to own or control programming on more than one percent of all channels. What would such a world, one with no transmission supply constraints, look like? In this world of potential plenty, there might well be quite a lot of"concentra tion, attributable to consumer demand. That is, the nature of popular culture is that it popular, which means lots of people pay attention to its components, whatever they may happen to be. Some channels would be quite popular, and people who are good at antici- pating(or creating) popular cultural icons would try to keep them so, and be well re- warded for success Their success of course. has a feedback effect on itself because what is successful is often popular. In the end, a relatively few channels, and owners, would have the lion's share of the audience and the revenues The prediction above is difficult to prove, based as it is on an assumption about the distribution of tastes among the public as well as the existence either of property rights in popular material or a scarcity of talent relevant to production of whatever is popular. The prediction does gain some credence from observation of mass communica- tion media with essentially unlimited physical capacity and very low entry costs, such as magazine and book publishing. If the prediction is correct, it follows that we would ex- perience a degree of media"concentration"even in the absence of anything that might be called a market imperfection or entry barrier. Such media concentration simply would be the result of demand-side forces combined with the likely natural distribution of special ized entrepreneurial skills relevant to any distribution of tastes, rather than supply-side monopolies or government giveaways of our treasured national resource, the spectrum Equality of access to transmission resources would not produce equality of result in audi- ence size and revenue, just as competition among book publishers produces a few best sellers and thousands of failures The economic concentration problem Media concentration has two policy dimensions The first is economic, the second political. The economic problem is not in any significant way different from the problem 8 8- 8 - 8 available to every viewer for free, aside from payments for content, with zero cost of add￾ing even more channels if the first billion get used up, and with no one permitted to own or control programming on more than one percent of all channels. What would such a world, one with no transmission supply constraints, look like? In this world of potential plenty, there might well be quite a lot of “concentra￾tion,” attributable to consumer demand. That is, the nature of popular culture is that it is popular, which means lots of people pay attention to its components, whatever they may happen to be. Some channels would be quite popular, and people who are good at antici￾pating (or creating) popular cultural icons would try to keep them so, and be well re￾warded for success. Their success, of course, has a feedback effect on itself, because what is successful is often popular. In the end, a relatively few channels, and owners, would have the lion’s share of the audience and the revenues. The prediction above is difficult to prove, based as it is on an assumption about the distribution of tastes among the public as well as the existence either of property rights in popular material or a scarcity of talent relevant to production of whatever is popular. The prediction does gain some credence from observation of mass communica￾tion media with essentially unlimited physical capacity and very low entry costs, such as magazine and book publishing. If the prediction is correct, it follows that we would ex￾perience a degree of media “concentration” even in the absence of anything that might be called a market imperfection or entry barrier. Such media concentration simply would be the result of demand-side forces combined with the likely natural distribution of special￾ized entrepreneurial skills relevant to any distribution of tastes, rather than supply-side monopolies or government giveaways of our treasured national resource, the spectrum. Equality of access to transmission resources would not produce equality of result in audi￾ence size and revenue, just as competition among book publishers produces a few best sellers and thousands of failures. The Economic Concentration Problem Media concentration has two policy dimensions. The first is economic, the second political. The economic problem is not in any significant way different from the problem