40 years ago you had the big three broadcast networks and cable news was still consigned to early adopters.
Most people would have gotten the news of the day from a newspaper. In terms of broadcast, most households had a preferred station and/or anchor and the big three spent a lot developing their on-air talent because it helped retain viewers. 60 Minutes, for example, was the most profitable news program on air and regularly competed with The Cosby Show, Cheers, and others for the highest Nielsen rating in a given week.
Let’s talk impact-over the 85-86 tv season 60 minutes averaged over 20 million views. In the last week of August (admittedly, not usually a great time for max tv watching), the top over the air program was Sunday Night Football with 10 million views. Basically, the article posits that there has been media consolidation (I’d argue that it’s always been controlled by a small number of firms) and that this is bad because:
If that is true, then the decline in viewers would indicate that they aren’t overshadowing shit, in fact they are fiercely competing with social media companies because their share of ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. And social media basically exists to monetize smaller, independent voices.
Anyway, the is largely to say who gives a shit if Kimmel gets silenced?* What you really need to be terrified about (and there was a NY Times op-ed on this very thing today) is when the admin leans on Alphabet to make criticism of Trump unavailable in their search results.
*this isn’t to take away anything from the necessity to preserve Kimmel and any other voice that would be categorized as oppositional. Silencing those is a prelude to more consequential steps.