In my upcoming book Does The News Make Me Look Fat? , I talk about how media consumption works like food consumption. In this model, there are people that gather, manufacture and make the media food we eat. Media companies hire writers and journalists to harvest he data materials that are processed by media production companies and are distributed to us for consumption as news and entertainment.

In the same way food companies have consolidated where fewer and fewer companies are producing more of our food (Four companies manage the slaughter of 83% of the cows we eat), so have media companies.

Most done in the name of cost-cutting and improving efficiencies through economies of scale. Still, some media companies seem skittish about boasting about the potential effects and repercussions of these consolidations. An eye-raising case in point. Saturday Night Live did a TV Funhouse cartoon poking fun at how media companies have been consolidated and their influence.

It was funny (least I thought so) and it was quietly cut from rerun airings after it’s first live debut. Fortunately someone on YouTube caught it on VHS and posted it.

It’s funny, or at least ironic, that a cartoon called “Conspiracy Rock” joking about a media conspiracy suddenly disappears like it’s part of a conspiracy. Take a look and see what you think. Note: GE doesn’t own NBC anymore. Viacom now owns CBS. Which actually consolidated more networks (Comcast merged it’s media properties with NBC and Viacom fused cable and movie properties with CBS).