ABSTRACT
Fewer media companies mean more control of inventory, greater distribution share and an amplified sales message—essential tools in storming the barricades. Media companies are no longer competing with one another. The competition is the Stairmaster, the family dinner or anything else that cuts into those few fixed hours of daily leisure time when books, newspapers or magazines might get read. Writing in Civilization, veteran editor Richard Todd laments the disappearance of a shared reading culture. Solitary and disenfranchised writers may not automatically regard big companies as their salvation, but in the midst of ever-increasing leisure opportunities, those companies devoted to written expression must be bigger and stronger to make their message heard. Conglomerates are a good idea.
