Viewpoint Diversity In Locally Owned Television News

Adam D. Rennhoff, Middle Tennessee State University, and Kenneth C. Wilbur, Duke University, Department of Marketing, have published Local Media Ownership and Viewpoint Diversity in Local Television News. Here is the abstract.

Regulators have long sought to protect viewpoint diversity in the media but have had trouble defining and measuring it. This paper proposes a theory-driven, market-based measure of viewpoint diversity in local television news. It then calculates this viewpoint diversity metric using a panel dataset of local television ratings. Finally, an econometric model is used to determine whether viewpoint diversity is associated with local media market ownership structure. The estimated elasticities of viewpoint diversity with respect to media ownership variables are very close to zero.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.