By reading the chapters on market structure, I do understand the differences among four types of market, however, I think it will be hard to identify the characteristic of news media market at least not as clear-cut as those are described in the textbook. Especially in the current trend of “multimedia journalism”, which converge text, video and audio together to present news. When the news products are a bundle of services, it is increasingly difficult to argue whether the product differentiation can keep the traditional news outlets separately in the markets of newspapers, network TVs, Cable networks, etc.. Or it may bring all the news media to the same play ground to form a single “news market”. (Isn’t it already happening?)
In this line of thinking, I am wondering the product differentiation, the entry barrier and whether the media firm is sensitive to the price changes of other competitor in the market, all those hard lines can define the market either as Monopolistic competition or Oligopoly or else may become blurred. Just looking at the data in Jacie’s post, would the news on Yahoo or on CNN.com make a difference to online news users? Would Yahoo or MSN be considered as competitors (in terms of online ad revenue) by CNN.com? Also, would CNN.com and Yahoo have the same entry barrier as an online news organization?
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