"When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition"

Robert McChesney’s observation scrutinizes the critical distinction between genuine market competition and state-orchestrated favoritism within the framework of media policy. He points out that when the government allocated exclusive rights to spectrum frequencies in major cities, it didn’t set forth a fair arena for open competition. Instead, it assured dominance to a select few corporations by bestowing upon them a controlled privilege: the right to be the sole users of valuable broadcast real estate. Rather than facilitating an environment where businesses would compete by merit, creativity, or service quality, such regulatory choices guaranteed that only chosen entities could enter these lucrative markets.

The implication is that government intervention at such a foundational level, who gets to broadcast at all, preempts the market’s natural ability to determine the most efficient or best-suited players. It establishes entrenched interests at the outset and codifies a structure where only those with the initial benefit can realistically compete. Thus, companies did not win because of consumer preference, technological innovation, or superior content, but rather because of governmental allocation of opportunity, often determined by political, economic, or social interests. This undermines the classical notion that the media or telecommunications landscape is a free marketplace of ideas or enterprise.

Furthermore, McChesney addresses a fundamental issue in media policy: regulatory decisions not only profoundly shape the structure of the industry but also strongly influence society’s access to information and cultural narratives. By “picking the winners,” policymakers have a far greater impact than simply arbitrating fair rules or refereeing contests; they create lasting economic and informational inequities. The outcomes extend beyond business and into civic life, impacting media diversity, public discourse, and ultimately, democracy itself. The process is less about giving everyone an equal start and more about institutionalizing advantage, and the legacies of those early decisions persist for generations.