Quote:
He can eat at McDonald's or Burger King. He can read Grisham or Clancy.
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Yep, that's the state of the world in all things these days. You can have your choice of the handful of 'brands' offered by giant corporations. It started decades ago with cars and major appliances.
When Chrysler bought AMC/Jeep in the late 1970s that was the end of any 'small' automotive manufacturers. Now Chrysler itself is just a division of the German manufacturer Daimler and both Ford and GM are likely to be bought by Japanese manufacturers within a decade or two.
Whirlpool is about to carry through the deal to purchase Maytag and make itself the manufacturer of the majority of the world's washing machines, clothes dryers, kitchen ranges, and a fair number of smaller appliances as well.
All of the competition combined will be smaller than Whirlpool/Maytag.
As the story quoted in your own post describes, similar things have happened in print publishing in the last few decades. A handful of giant publishers control the market. And I think we all know what has been happening in broadcasting, as well. Despite the proliferation of
channels there are really fewer and fewer
sources of news and entertainment programming. Giant corporations are just breaking the market down into smaller niches.
Re: OT: The state of the book publishing industry?
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