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Answer Key
1. B
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45. C
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1. Netflix killed the video store, and it is in the process of killing the movie theaters.
A) True
B) False
2. Netflix struggled from 1997 until 2016 and even tried to sell out to Google.
A) True
B) False
3. An oligopoly exists when there is a lot of variety in the number of sellers and producers
of media content, but not much variety in what they actually produce.
A) True
B) False
4. The shift to an information-based economy emphasized the cultivation of specialized
niche media markets.
A) True
B) False
5. The purpose of antitrust laws is to encourage diversity and competition in the
marketplace.
A) True
B) False
6. The purpose of the 1950 Celler-Kefauver Act was to limit corporate mergers and joint
ventures that reduced competition.
A) True
B) False
7. The movement toward business deregulation started during the presidency of Ronald
Reagan (1981–1989).
A) True
B) False
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8. The government trend toward deregulation was actually begun during the Carter years.
A) True
B) False
9. Government controls over business were drastically weakened during the presidency of
Ronald Reagan (1981–1989).
A) True
B) False
10. The deregulation movement returned media economics to nineteenth-century principles.
A) True
B) False
11. The television network ABC is owned by Disney.
A) True
B) False
12. Most media companies spread out their holdings among various types of mass media
rather than trying to control one medium, to avoid monopoly charges.
A) True
B) False
13. Because today’s flexible economy demands fast product development, smaller media
companies have an advantage over their larger competitors.
A) True
B) False
14. The era of downsizing coincided with an increase in workers who belong to labor
unions.
A) True
B) False
15. From 2009 to 2012, most U.S. post-recession growth has been among middle class
Americans.
A) True
B) False
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16. The global economy has reduced prices to the point where most low-paid workers in
Third World factories can afford the stereos and TV sets they help manufacture.
A) True
B) False
17. Because of the rise of specialization, people under eighteen and women over thirty-five
have more cable television shows targeted at them.
A) True
B) False
18. The term synergy describes the dynamic creative energy of media corporations such as
Disney.
A) True
B) False
19. Synergy typically refers to the promotion and sale of different versions of a media
product across the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate.
A) True
B) False
20. The success of Snow White, Fantasia, and Pinocchio propelled the Disney Company to
major studio status.
A) True
B) False
21. Disney now owns Iron Man, Spider-Man, and X-men.
A) True
B) False
22. Apple holds the position of top digital media conglomerate.
A) True
B) False
23. Former CBS broadcast chief William Paley once argued that anyone who attacked the
commercial broadcast system was attacking democracy itself.
A) True
B) False
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24. Most citizens of developed countries have a wide range of media products available to
them, but have little say in which media are created and circulated.
A) True
B) False
25. The global spread of media software and electronic hardware has made it easier for
political leaders to secretly suppress dissident groups.
A) True
B) False
26. One concern about the creation of a global village is cultural disconnection.
A) True
B) False
27. American culture dominates global markets partly because it is appealing and partly for
economic reasons.
A) True
B) False
28. News organizations owned by large media conglomerates have been significantly
increasing the number of reporters assigned to cover international issues, especially following
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
A) True
B) False
29. The U.S. mainstream news media have done little in recent years to sustain a public
debate. A) True
B) False
30. Public debates about the structure and ownership of the mass media are encouraged by
media owners, who consider such discussion to be in their best interests.
A) True
B) False
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31. The book publishing and motion-picture industries are both examples of ______.
A) monopolies
B) oligopolies
C) O & Os
D) limited competition
E) None of the options are correct.
32. Which of the following best describes limited competition?
A) A single firm that dominates an industry
B) A market that has many producers and sellers, but only a few products
C) A few firms that dominate an industry
D) Customers that pay directly for media goods, such as a cable TV or a magazine
subscription
E) A company that is limited in the way it can compete with its rivals, as in case of
price fixing
33. What was the reason a federal district court judge in California threw out media
entrepreneur Byron Allen’s $20 billion dollar lawsuit against Comcast and Time Warner Cable?
A) The suit accused the cable companies of discriminating against black-owned media.
B) The suit accused the cable companies of discriminating against female-owned
media.
C) The suit accused the cable companies of discriminating against Hispanic-owned
media.
D) The suit accused the cable companies of discriminating against Asian-owned media
E) The suit accused the cable companies of limiting ownership to only white male
media moguls like Rupert Murdock.
34. People love television but do not like the ____________________, where programs only
appear one time on non-portable screens.
A) linear experience
B) mobile experience
C) Internet experience
D) circular experience
E) None of the options are correct.
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35. If the first half of the twentieth century was part of the Industrial Age, the shift away
from manufacturing jobs starting in the 1950s led to a period often known as the ______.
A) Monopolistic Age
B) Information Age
C) Cultural Imperialism Age
D) MTV Age
E) New Ice Age
36. Which of the following is a characteristic of the shift from an industrial to an information
economy?
A) A change in focus from mass production to niche markets
B) A movement from global to local markets
C) A movement from office work to factory and industrialized production
D) An emphasis on laborers rather than service workers
E) All of the options are correct.
37. The transition to an information economy was characterized by ______.
A) an increasingly centralized and permanent workforce
B) intense product rivalry between one country and another
C) an emphasis on mass rather than niche markets
D) concentrated ownership in nearly every media sector
E) the ever-increasing power of labor union movements
38. The first antitrust law, enacted in 1890, was the ______ Act.
A) Clayton Antitrust
B) Sherman Antitrust
C) Celler-Kefauver
D) Federal Trade Commission
E) None of the options are correct.
39. The 1996 Telecommunications Act ______.
A) placed limits on cable company rate increases
B) allowed telephone companies to enter the TV and radio business
C) allowed a company in the Top 20 market to own a newspaper and a TV station, as
long as there were at least eight TV stations in the market
D) used regulation to guard against ownership concentration
E) None of the options are correct.
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40. Government deregulation and corporate strategy are leading to a mass media industry
controlled by ______.
A) hundreds of small companies
B) monopolies
C) oligopolies
D) national conglomerates
E) one single parent corporation
41. The billion-dollar mergers and takeovers that swept the mass media in the 1990s were
possible because of ______.
A) speculation on Wall Street
B) deregulation
C) the collapse of communism
D) the rise of the World Wide Web
E) tighter legal controls on corporate spending
42. Given that ______ percent of new media products fail, a flexible economy demands fast
product development and market research.
A) 10–20
B) 30–35
C) 40–50
D) 80–90
E) over 95
43. According to your textbook, today’s flexible media system, in which new products are
constantly rushed to the marketplace, favors ______.
A) workers who belong to labor unions
B) individual entrepreneurs who can tailor a unique media product to meet a niche
market
C) large companies that can easily absorb losses incurred from failed products
D) government-subsidized companies that don’t have to be concerned with making a
profit
E) None of the options are correct.
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44. Which statement best reflects the progress of U.S. labor unions over the last seventy
years? A) They have experienced steady growth and now represent 35 percent of workers.
B) After being painted as “socialist,” they saw their enrollment suffer badly through
the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, but they have rebounded strongly in the last thirty years.
C) Enrollment seems to rise and fall each decade, but with an overall peak since the
turn of the twenty-first century.
D) They have benefited greatly from the steady influx of manufacturing away from
other countries.
E) They grew steadily following World War II, peaked in the 1950s when about a third
of Americans belonged to a union, then have watched their numbers dwindle as more
manufacturing jobs move overseas.
45. In the textbook, the term wage gap refers to ______.
A) the growing difference in pay based on gender
B) the downsizing of traditional newsrooms, with fewer reporters earning much higher
salaries
C) the rapidly growing difference in compensation between average wage earners and
top corporate executives
D) the gap between union salaries in the 1950s and the 2000s
E) the shrinking gap in pay between hourly and salaried employees
46. The trend of downsizing ______.
A) was spurred by deregulation and a decline in worker protections
B) is supposed to make companies more profitable, competitive, and flexible
C) has forced many employees to scramble for jobs
D) has increased the wage gap between the corporate CEO and the average worker
E) All of the options are correct.
47. Which of the following is not a statement that describes the modern concept of
hegemony?
A) Hegemony is a good tool for encouraging conversation and debate.
B) Hegemony was a technique recommended by modern public relations founder
Edward Bernays as a way to control public opinion.
C) Hegemony’s qualities are often defined or reinforced by narratives, or stories, told
in various media forms including books, movies, and television.
D) Hegemony tends to portray the social, economic, and political status quo as normal
and natural ways to see the world.
E) Hegemony tends to repel self-scrutiny or critical examination.
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48. The acceptance of the dominant values in a culture by those who are subordinate to those
who hold economic power describes ______.
A) consolidation
B) democracy
C) hegemony
D) specialization
E) synergy
49. According to the textbook, what’s wrong with referring to a position as “common
sense”?
A) It creates a context in which there is less chance for challenge and criticism.
B) Social and political leaders use it as a tool to stifle changes to the status quo.
C) It is a social construct that shifts over time rather than representing any solid
“truth.”
D) It is a powerful tool of hegemony.
E) All of the options are correct.
50. The significant trends in major mainstream media economics today are ______.
A) community ownership and civic action
B) specialization and synergy
C) partisanship and deference
D) national ownership and community action
E) dramatically greater diversity in ownership
51. Magazines like J-14 and AARP The Magazine that target a certain age group represent a
form of ______.
A) specialization
B) globalization
C) partisanship
D) ageism
E) synergy
52. The concept of synergy can best be described as ______.
A) the power of a new media development as it displaces old, less technologically
advanced media
B) several media subsidiaries working under one corporate umbrella to promote
different versions of a media product
C) the development of shopping-mall bookstores to boost book sales
D) the development of more multimediated ways to distribute books
E) the ability of one culture to dominate another
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53. When a company uses its concert promotion department to put on a show, then
advertises the concert on the company’s billboards, gives away free tickets on radio stations
owned by that company, and advertises on the company’s television stations, this is an example
of ______.
A) consumer control
B) the global marketplace
C) synergy
D) deregulation
E) consolidation
54. In the 1950s, Disney was marked by ______.
A) legal trouble
B) corporate diversification
C) global expansion
D) economic turmoil
E) corporate shake-ups
55. Which of the following is an example of synergy by Disney?
A) Creating a movie series from its popular theme-park ride Pirates of the Caribbean.
B) Merging with Pixar in 2006
C) Starting Buena Vista in 1953
D) Hiring Michael Eisner to lead a new management team in 1984
E) Opening Disneyland Paris in 1991
56. Disney expanded its global reach by ______.
A) purchasing ABC
B) opening a theme park in California
C) merging with Pixar
D) opening Tokyo Disney and Disneyland Paris
E) None of the options are correct.
57. In 2006, Disney CEO Robert Iger merged the company with ______.
A) Pixar
B) ABC
C) CBS
D) Viacom
E) Google
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58. Which of the following is true about the globalization of media?
A) It’s more difficult for American media to reach other parts of the world.
B) Globalization allows foreign companies to have more control over the media that
Americans consume.
C) Globalization has prevented U.S. TV channels from establishing a foothold in other
countries.
D) Globalization facilitates the equal development of media in both the United States
and other countries.
E) Globalization allows companies to recoup losses in the United States with sales
overseas.
59. Of the new digital media conglomerates, which one has a main strength of search
advertising?
A) Google
B) Facebook
C) Apple
D) Disney
E) Amazon
60. All five digital media conglomerates are weak in the area of ______.
A) e-commerce
B) search consoles
C) hardware devices
D) media narratives
E) social media
61. Which of the following companies owns YouTube?
A) Viacom
B) General Electric
C) Google
D) Disney
E) AOL
62. The ______ merger is considered the biggest media merger failure ever.
A) Universal Music Group and EMI
B) Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting
C) Sirius and XM
D) Disney and ABC
E) AOL and Time Warner
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63. How might diversification be used to skirt antitrust laws?
A) Employing minorities tends to make regulators happy and reluctant to target
companies.
B) It gets local communities to issue licensed monopolies, such as is the case with
many local cable companies that are often the only cable company allowed to operate in
a local community.
C) By buying up lots of different media products, a company can avoid the appearance
of monopolizing any one product, yet still be large enough that it only really competes
with a handful of other similar companies.
D) A company avoids U.S. antitrust laws by buying up media companies around the
world.
E) None of the options are correct.
64. Our society has been reluctant to debate the inequalities inherent in mass media
ownership and has gradually collapsed the critical distinctions between ______.
A) capitalism and the free market
B) democracy and free speech
C) space and time
D) capitalism and democracy
E) socialism and free speech
65. In our market economy, citizens have ______, but not very much control over the types
of products they might actually want.
A) consumer choice
B) enormous power
C) freedom from thought
D) great responsibility
E) None of the options are correct.
66. Cultural imperialism is ______.
A) a concept in journalism ethics that argues that journalists must know the culture
they are reporting on
B) the theory that globalization is good for media, since it makes media more
culturally diverse
C) the idea that large and powerful countries can dominate and even change the culture
of smaller countries through media
D) the argument that people are more affected by the media that is familiar to them
E) the process of colonization of smaller and weaker countries by larger and more
powerful countries
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67. America has been accused of cultural imperialism for which of the following reasons?
A) U.S. corporations own most of the world’s mass media.
B) The Pentagon dictates foreign policy in most foreign countries.
C) American styles in fashion, food, and entertainment dominate the global markets.
D) Baywatch was more popular overseas than it was in the United States.
E) All of the options are correct.
68. Which is a term that describes what happens when one society exports an overwhelming
surge of media images that strongly influence everything from fashion styles to views of
morality?
A) Cultural imperialism
B) Oligopoly
C) Consumer choice
D) Narrative storytelling
E) Monopoly
69. The exportation of U.S. entertainment media is sometimes viewed as ______ because it
discourages the development of original local products and value systems.
A) criminal
B) cultural dumping
C) monopolistic
D) consumer choice
E) capitalistic
70. One key paradox of the Information Age is that for economic discussions to be
meaningful and democratic, they must be carried out in ______.
A) educational settings
B) the popular media as well as in educational settings
C) community-action groups
D) American homes
E) presidential debates
71. What was the impact/outcome of a 2010 Supreme Court decision (in a five-to-four vote)
regarding campaign financing?
A) Stricter limits were placed on the amount of money businesses could donate to
political candidates and causes.
B) No business or corporation is allowed to influence politicians with campaign cash.
C) Only small businesses and unions can donate money to campaigns.
D) The government cannot interfere in campaign spending by corporations.
E) None of the options are correct.
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72. Sometimes called monopolistic competition, _______________________ competition
refers to a market with many producers and sellers but only a few products within a particular
category.
73. The twentieth century saw a shift away from a manufacturing economy to a(n)
__________________ economy in the United States.
74. The promotion and sale of a product (in all its versions) throughout the various
subsidiaries of a media conglomerate is called _______________________.
75. This corporation owns the ABC television network: _______________________.
76. _______________________ is the phenomenon of one country’s media, fashion, and
food dominating the global market and shaping the cultures and identities of other nations.
77. The ____ permitted telephone companies entry into the TV business.
78. The ____ broke up the Standard Oil Company.
79. The ____ limited anticompetitive mergers.
80. The ____ allowed dealers to sell competing products.
81. Name and describe the trend for governments to take a decreasing role in monitoring the
structure and content of media (as well as other industries).
82. Deregulation, globalization, and new media technologies have had significant effects on
the content, the shape, and the business of media as a whole. Pick two changes you think are
most significant and discuss their major impact.
83. What are the three basic structures of today’s mass media industries, and how do they
differ?
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84. How have media mergers changed the economics of mass media?
85. The general trend of deregulation made significant changes to the media landscape.
Explain the idea behind deregulation and the major media marketplace changes that followed.
86. Is there such a thing as a global village? What does this concept mean to you?
87. The idea of common sense sounds like it should be a good thing. How might the way the
concept is often used be bad for democracy?
88. What purpose does it serve for politicians and powerful media companies to provide
“common–sense” narratives to the public?
89. How does the modern concept of hegemony apply to the current media landscape?
90. How do global and specialized markets factor into today’s media economy?
91. What is the role of synergy in the current climate of media mergers? Describe three
examples of synergy.
92. Describe three negative effects of media consolidation.
93. What are the differences between freedom of consumer choice and consumer control?
94. Name one argument for and one argument against the spread of global media.
95. Why do some critics charge that concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few
large conglomerates is antidemocratic?
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Answer Key
1. B
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45. C
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91.
92.
93.
94.
95.