Duopoly Light? Service Agreements and Local TV

The United States is in the middle of a debate about media ownership with clear lines of demarcation. The industry claims that regulation is burdensome, unnecessary, and disruptive of market mechanisms. Media reformers counter that relying only on the market can be detrimental to the public interest. This research revealed that service agreements among stations in the same television market have a profound effect on the content of local TV news as station managers and owners achieve economies of scale in the use of anchors, reporters, scripts, and graphics/video.