If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world. In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world. So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?
Just think about your own behavior. Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on. Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media. In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.
It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out. It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.
These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on. For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about? If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.
Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.
I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe. They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report”, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day…
Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes
Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes
Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes
Using a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes
When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.
And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.
What in the world are we doing to ourselves?
The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.
If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you. There is no way around that. You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.
And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions. Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own…
Comcast
NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video
The Walt Disney Company
ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
News Corporation
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan
How to Disappear Off the Grid Completely (Ad)
Time Warner
CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine
Viacom
MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
CBS Corporation
CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network
Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well. Just check out these numbers…
Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.
The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.
The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.
And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of “programming” that is controlled by the elite each day.
The good news is that there are signs of an awakening. More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers. Here is one example…
Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.
Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.
As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment. This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.
You can only enslave people for so long. Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.
In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves. If you find that you are still addicted to the “programming” that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.
In the end, you will be glad that you did.
Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.
As for programming, consider the following admissions:
“…Many Americans have an undying faith in the media and thus revere this man-made entity without realizing they are doing so. These people usually consider anything printed or spoken by the media as gospel, and this is precisely how these opinion-shapers would have it.
“People who idolize the media are, at the best, naïve:
‘The simple [naïve] believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.’ (Proverbs 14:15)
“We are to live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of YHWH” (Deuteronomy 8:3). The word of everyone else should be judged by “the mouth of two or three witnesses” (2 Corinthians 13:1).
“Howard Beal of Network described the media:
‘If you want truth, don’t come to us. We will tell you anything but the truth. Go to God.… Go to your gurus, go to yourselves. But, don’t come to us.… Your lives are real, we are an illusion.’36
“That is what an idol is: an illusion. Thomas Jefferson recognized the media for what it is:
‘The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.’37
“The impression of an independent press in America is part of the illusion. In 1898, at an annual dinner of the American Press Association, John Swinton, the one-time editor-in-chief of the New York Times, was called upon to toast journalism and America’s free press. He responded in a surprising way:
‘”There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.38 You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to revile, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an “Independent Press.” We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.39
Mr. Swinton identified modern journalism as a crime:
‘Journalism, once a profession, and then a trade, is now a crime.’40….”
For more, see online book “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” the second in a series of ten free online books on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments. Click on my picture, then our website. Go to our Online Books page and scroll down to title.
Well, here we are folks! The future is upon us……as it was foreseen by a television show less than 20 year ago. Does anyone remember the post apoplectic show, .Max Headroom? This program had a society that was controlled by a handful of corporations who disseminated the news & entertainment to the people. I recall that it was a dark future that had many problems. Many of us didn’t think it could happen in our lifetimes. Truth is again stranger than fiction!
Who runs Hollywood? C’mon
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/19/opinion/oe-stein19
Goes for the rest of the media, look at the reaction to Trump, the neocons are going berserk…
Makes me and mine look a typical – hardly ever watch fox news or any news – it’s all theater all the time (especially international events (false flags agendas).
Cabally wood is another tool for the fools.
Here’s a thought – stop watching the boob tube and stop going to the moooovies.
Hint: it’s ok to mute or record then fast forward.
No kidding. As a “latch-key” kid before the term became popular, i had the tv on all the time. Now i am disconnected from network tv and cable, and never felt better! Netflix, dvd or YouTube let me select my own entertainment rather than network drivel. Pull the plug, your brain will thank you for it!
I find it hard to believe that the average person watches 10 hours of programming a day. There are only 24 hours in a day and one third of that is spent in bed and another third is spent at work.
8 hours sleeping
8 hours at work
2 hours driving to and from work
1 hour to have breakfast, shower and get ready for work
1 hour to prepare, eat supper and clean up
That equals 20 hours spent doing things other than watching TV, reading newspapers or consuming other media
The average adult providing they don’t do any other house work after supper or help their kids with homework or spend quality time with their spouse will have not quite 4 hours to watch TV, read newspapers and consume other media. 4 hours is considerably less than 10 hours. I think they are grossly exaggerating the amount of time the average person spends glued to media. You would have to be retired or on vacation to spend 10 hours in front of the boob tube.
I think your numbers are generally right for the average working adult. But consider how many people listen to the radio at work or in their car. Also, something like 94 million people are not working for whatever reason. That would skew the media hours upward.
True but it is not really active listening when the radio is on in the car or at work. It is more like background noise to keep you company and most people only half listen if it all.
Learn to just breath. Throw the boob tube out the window.