There are several types ofmass media in the United States:television,radio,cinema,newspapers,magazines, andwebsites. The U.S. also has a strongmusic industry.New York City,Manhattan in particular, and to a lesser extentLos Angeles, are considered the epicenters of American media. Theories to explain the success of such companies include reliance on certain policies of the Americanfederal government or a tendency tonatural monopolies in the industry, with a corporatemedia bias.

Many media entities are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising,subscriptions, and sale ofcopyrighted material. Americanmedia conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large revenues as well as large opposition in many parts of the world. With the passage of theTelecommunications Act of 1996, furtherderegulation andconvergence are under way, leading to mega-mergers, furtherconcentration of media ownership, and the emergence of multinational media conglomerates. These mergers enable tighter control of information.^[1] By the early decades of the 21st century, ahandful of corporations control the vast majority of bothdigital andlegacy media.^[2][3][4] Critics allege thatlocalism, local news, and other content at the community level, media spending and coverage of news, anddiversity of ownership and views have suffered as a result of these processes of media concentration.^[5]

The organizationReporters Without Borders compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organization's assessment of theirpress freedom records. In 2023–24, United States was ranked 55th out of 180 countries (a drop of ten places from the previous year) and was given a "problematic" rating.^[6] A 2022Gallup poll showed that only 11% of Americans trust television news and 16% trust newspapers.^[7] On the future of Spanish-language media in the U.S., Alberto Avendaño, ex-director ofEl Tiempo Latino/Washington Post, claimed that "Hispanic-American" news coverage in the English-language media is "absolutely pathetic", but he was optimistic, arguing that demographic shifts would inevitably render the Latino media a significant presence in the context of American media. According to a May 2023AP-NORC poll, 74% of respondents said the media is to blame for increasedpolitical polarization in the United States.^[8]

After being widely successful in the 20th century, newspapers have declined in their influence and penetration into American households over the years. The U.S. does not have a national paper.The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, andUSA Today are the most circulated newspapers in the United States and are sold in most U.S. cities.^[9]

Although the primary audience forThe New York Times (NYT) had initially been the residents ofNew York City and its surroundingmetropolitan region, the NYT, nicknamed "the Grey Lady" and which has won the mostPulitzer Prizes of any publication, has gradually become the dominant "newspaper of record" for the U.S. media. Apart from its daily nationwide distribution, the term means that back issues are archived on microfilm by every decent-sized public library in the nation, and the Times' articles are often cited by both historians and judges as evidence that a major historical event occurred on a certain date.The Washington Post andThe Wall Street Journal are also newspapers of record, to a lesser extent. AlthoughUSA Today has tried to establish itself as a national paper, it has been widely derided by the academic world as the "McPaper" and is not subscribed to or archived by most libraries.^[10]

Apart from the aforementioned newspapers, all major metropolitan areas have their own local newspapers. Most metropolitan areas will generally support one or two major newspapers, with many smaller publications targeted towards particular audiences. Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a majornews agency wire service, such as theAssociated Press,Bloomberg, andReuters,^[11] for their national and world coverage.

With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such asGannett orMcClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families. Most general-purpose newspapers are either being printed one time a week, usually on Thursday or Friday, or are printed daily. Weekly newspapers tend to have much smaller circulation and are more prevalent in rural communities or small towns. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily papers, for example, New York City'sVillage Voice or Los Angeles'L.A. Weekly, to name two of the best-known. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries, and papers for local ethnic and social groups.

As competition from other media has evolved, the number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has declined over the past half-century, according toEditor & Publisher, the trade journal of American newspapers. In particular, the number of evening newspapers has fallen by almost one-half since 1970, while the number of morning editions and Sunday editions has grown. For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450 – or about 70 percent – of them were evening papers) while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766—or about half—of them were evening papers.)Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded:

The primary source of newspaper income isadvertising – in the form of "classifieds" or inserted advertising circulars – rather thancirculation income. However, since the late 1990s, this revenue source has been directly challenged by Web sites likeeBay (for sales of secondhand items),Monster.com (jobs), andCraigslist (everything). Additionally, as investigative journalism declined at major daily newspapers in the 2000s, many reporters formed their own non-profit investigative newsrooms. Examples includeProPublica on the national level,Texas Tribune at the state level andVoice of OC at the local level. The largest newspapers (by circulation) in the United States areUSA Today,The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, and theLos Angeles Times.

In August 2019, it was announced thatNew Media Investment Group had agreed to buyGannett, and operations would continue under the Gannett rather thanGateHouse name, at the Gannett headquarters but under New Media's CEO.^[12][13] The acquisition of Gannett by New Media Investment Group was completed on November 19, 2019, making the combined company the largest newspaper publisher in the United States.^[14] Immediately after the merger was finalized, all GateHouse Media URLs began redirecting to Gannett.com.La Opinión is the most read newspaper website in the United States, reaching more than 6 million readers each month. It is the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States and the second-most read newspaper in Los Angeles (after theLos Angeles Times).

Thanks to the huge size of the English-speaking North American media market, the United States has a large magazine industry with hundreds of magazines serving almost every interest, as can be determined by glancing at any newsstand in any large American city. Most magazines are owned by one of the large media conglomerates or by one of their smaller regional brethren. TheAmerican Society of Magazine Editors sponsors the annualNational Magazine Awards recognizing excellence.

The U.S. has three leading weeklynews magazines:Time,Newsweek, andU.S. News & World Report.Time andNewsweek are center-left whileU.S. News & World Report tends to be center-right.Time is well known for naming a "Person of the Year" each year, whileU.S. News publishes annual ratings of American colleges and universities. The U.S. also has over a dozen major political magazines, includingThe Atlantic,The New Yorker,Harper's Magazine andForeign Policy among others. In entertainment the magazinesVariety,The Hollywood Reporter,Rolling Stone,L.A. Record andBillboard are very popular. In artsSmithsonian andArt in America magazines are major magazines.

Finally, besides the hundreds of specialized magazines that serve the diverse interests likeVanity Fair,People,Maxim,Consumer Reports,Sports Illustrated, and fashion magazines, likeVogue,Glamour,GQ,InStyle,Cosmopolitan and hobbies of the American people, likeMotor Trend,Health,AARP the Magazine,Good Housekeeping,Bon Appétit, andSaveur there are also dozens of magazines published by professional organizations for their members, such asScientific American forscientists,Communications of the ACM (forcomputer science specialists),IEEE Spectrum (forengineers), theABA Journal (for lawyers),Businessweek andForbes forbusiness,Architectural Digest andArchitectural Record forarchitects.

El Nuevo Cojo (Los Angeles), andTwo Mundos Magazine (Miami) are two bilingual (English/Spanish) lifestyle and entertainment magazines. It's not a coordinated exodus for magazines in the United States but the transition from print's primacy to digital's that has started at the turn of the century.

American radio broadcasts in two bands:FM andAM. Some stations are onlytalk radio – featuring interviews and discussions – whilemusic radio stations broadcast one particular type of music:Top 40,hip-hop,country, etc. Radio broadcast companies have become increasingly consolidated in recent years.National Public Radio is the nation's primary public radio network, but most radio stations are commercial and profit-oriented. Talk radio as a political medium has also exploded in popularity during the 1990s, due to the 1987 repeal of theFairness Doctrine, which meant that stations no longer had to "balance" their day by programming alternative points of view.^{[citation needed]}

TheFederal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1970 had limited the number of radio station one person or company could own to 1 am and 1 FM locally, and 7 am and 7 FM stations nationally. But due to extensiveconcentration of media ownership stemming from theTelecommunications Act of 1996, radio companies could own not more than 8 local stations per area market. Most stations are now owned by major radio companies such asiHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel Communications),Cumulus Media,Townsquare Media andAudacy (Formerly Entercom). SeeIBOC andHD Radio.

A new form of radio that is gaining popularity issatellite radio. The two biggestsubscriptions based radio services areSirius Satellite Radio andXM Satellite Radio, which have recently merged to formSirius XM Radio. Unlike terrestrial radio music channels are commercial free and other channels feature minimal commercials. Satellite radio also is not regulated by the FCC.

During the advent of the internet in the 21st century,internet radio and digital streaming services have been emerged. Among popular brands arePandora,Spotify andiHeartRadio. Although, the recording industry also sees Internet radio as a threat and has attempted to impose high royalty rates for the use of recorded music to discourage independent stations from playing popular songs. Spotify listeners can choose the songs they want to play, when they want to play them. ... Pandora is a way for users to discover new music that matches their tastes, while Spotify—even though it offers radio stations, too—is better suited to stream and share music that users already know and love.

Nielsen Audio, formerly known as Arbitron, is consumer research company that provides ratings (similar to theNielsen ratings) for national and local radio stations in the United States.Digital Audio Broadcasting goal is to replace FM broadcasting and become the future of radio. Some industry experts are wary of this new transmission method. ... However, this method of transmission could benefit internet radio stations that want to develop local coverage and keep up to speed with FM radio stations.

Ninety-nine percent of American households have at least one television and the majority of households have more than one.^[15] The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC),CBS (formerly the Columbia Broadcasting System), theAmerican Broadcasting Company (ABC) and theFox Broadcasting Company (Fox).^[16] On August 13, 2019, CBS andViacom officially announced theirintention to merge, with the combined company to be namedViacomCBS. The merger was completed on December 4, 2019.^{[17][18][19][20]} The company will have 50% interest inThe CW.

The five major American broadcast networks

Several Spanish language broadcast (as well as cable) networks exist, which are the most common form of non-English television broadcasts. These networks are not as widely distributed over-the-air as their English counterparts, available mostly in markets with sizable Latino and Hispanic populations; several of these over-the-air networks are alternatively fed directly to cable, satellite and IPTV providers in markets without either the availability or the demand for a locally based owned-and-operated or affiliate station.

The largest of these networks,Univision, launched in 1986 as a successor to the Spanish International Network. Its major competition isTelemundo (est. 1986), a sister network of NBC (which acquired Telemundo in 2001). Founded: 2009Estrella TV is another Spanish-language broadcast television network.

Public television has a far smaller role than in most other countries. However, a number of states, including West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and South Carolina, among others, do have state-owned public broadcasting authorities which operate and fund all public television stations in their respective states. The income received from the government is insufficient to cover expenses and stations also rely on corporate sponsorships and viewer contributions.DirecTV andDish Network are the major satellite television providers, with 20 and 14 million customers respectively as of February 2014.^[21] Meanwhile, the major cable television providers areComcast with 22 million customers,Charter Communications with 17 million, andCox Communications,AT&T U-verse andVerizon Fios with 5–6 million each.

In the 20th century, the motion picture industry rose to become one of the most successful and powerful industries in the U.S. Along with other intellectual property industries, its relative importance to the American economy has strengthened as the importance of manufacturing and agriculture have decreased (due toglobalization).^[23]

The 1980s and 1990s saw another significant development. The full acceptance ofhome video by studios opened a vast new business to exploit. Films such asShowgirls,The Secret of NIMH, andThe Shawshank Redemption, which may have performed poorly in their theatrical run, were now able to find success in the video market. It also saw the first generation of filmmakers with access to videotapes emerge. Directors such asQuentin Tarantino andPaul Thomas Anderson had been able to view thousands of films and produced films with vast numbers of references and connections to previous works. Tarantino has had a number of collaborations with directorRobert Rodriguez. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action filmEl Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2 million against an initial before-production budget of $7,000. In 2011,El Mariachi was inducted into theLibrary of Congress to be preserved as part of itsNational Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is further immortalized byGuinness World Records as the lowest-budgeted film ever to gross $1 million at the box office.^[24] This was possible thanks to the explosion ofindependent film enabled by ever-decreasing costs for filmmaking. With the rise of the DVD in the 21st century, DVDs have quickly become even more profitable to studios and have led to an explosion of packaging extra scenes, extended versions, andcommentary tracks with the films.^{[citation needed]}

DVD and high-definitionBlu-ray sales have substantially declined with the rise ofvideo on demand, especially over-the-topstreaming services. The range of viewing devices went through another mass expansion with the popularization oftablet computers andsmartphones.

During theCOVID-19 pandemic,drive-in theaters reported an unexpected surge in attendance in several U.S. states as, unlike with indoor theaters unable to operate because of bans on mass gatherings, these were allowed to operate.

The United States has the largest video games presence in the world in terms of total industry employees.^[25] In 2017, the U.S. game industry as a whole was worth US$18.4 billion and consisted of roughly 2457 companies that had a rough total of 220,000 people employed.^[26][27] U.S. video game revenue is forecast to reach $230 billion by 2022,^[28] making it the largest video game market in the world.^{[citation needed]} Over 150 million Americans play video games, with an average age of 35 and a gender breakdown of 59 percent male and 41 percent female.^[29] In 2011, the average American gamer spent an average of 13 hours per week playing video games.^[30]

The Internet has provided a means for newspapers and other media organizations to deliver news and keep archives public. Revenue is generated through advertising or subscription payments. Aside from web portals and search engines, the top visited website in the United States, include awide variety of popular websites.

Onlinestreaming has made it possible to watch a wide array ofvideo-on-demand options. Everything from live news and sports to classic movies to modern TV favorites outside of usual movie theaters, and from any device. Cable and broadband companies are having to extend offers to compete in this 655 billion dollar digital market.^[31] In the early 21-century many of the most popular over-the-topvideo on demand streaming services launched.

Thea la carte styleVirtual MVPDs are over-the-top live video streaming services that mirrored cable and "TV Everywhere" bundled services, priced at lower monthly rates than the packages offered by traditional pay television system operators.Sling TV,PlayStation Vue andfuboTV were launched in 2015.DirecTV Now followed in 2016. andPhilo in 2017.New York magazine has a Vulture's streaming guide to the TV Shows and movies available for streaming on Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Hulu. The term "streaming wars" was coined to discuss the new era of competition between video streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Funimation, Crunchyroll, etc.^[32]

Most of the currentmajor film studios have become part of corporate conglomerates that also include major television broadcast networks and some of the most popular news and entertainment cable television channels. Sony Pictures has been an exception, and Fox sold its film properties to Disney in 2019, retaining its television and radio broadcast operations. All of the major entertainment companies have launched streaming services as they face competition from new media companies. Amazon purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of the "big five" studios in theGolden Age of Hollywood, in 2022. Comcast is also a majorInternet service provider, representing a high degree ofvertical integration.

This conglomeration gives owners the ability to reuse the same content between theaters, broadcast, and streaming, and to use intellectual property frommedia franchises they own, across businesses without worrying about licensing. Some owners have extended their franchises into in-persontheme parks andvideo games. Constantly looking for fresh source material, the major entertainment companies often compete to buy the rights to adapt books andindependent films; Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery own the country's top two comic book publishers. Some media franchises are also cross-licensed, especially for streaming and theme parks.

• Margaret A. Blanchard, ed. (2013) [1998].History of the Mass Media in the United States: An Encyclopedia. Routledge.ISBN 978-1-135-91749-4.
• Cynthia L. Clark, ed. (2011). "Media".The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. pp. 282+.ISBN 978-1-59884-461-0.
• Anthony Fellow (2011).American Media History (3rd ed.). Cengage Learning, Inc.ISBN 978-1-111-34812-0.
• Edward S. Herman; Noam Chomsky (1988).Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.ISBN 0-375-71449-9.
• Lisa Nakamura (2014). "Media". In Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler (ed.).Keywords for American Cultural Studies (2nd ed.). New York University Press. pp. 165+.ISBN 9780814725313.

• "United States Profile: Media",BBC News, August 28, 2019
• "Media History Digital Library". David Pierce and Eric Hoyt, directors. USA.Non-profit...dedicated to digitizing historic books and magazines about film, broadcasting, and recorded sound{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Barry Brummett,"Media: An Overview", inSimon J. Bronner (ed.),Encyclopedia of American Studies, Johns Hopkins University Press

• Mass media in the United States
• Mass media by country
• Mass media in North America by country

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