The majority of the people in the US are center-left libertarians, more or less in agreement with me on most major issues. The entire mass media and both major political Parties are significantly more rightwing than the US population.There is no left-wing media of the type that you envision because very few people are that left-wing in the U.S.
The reason no major media caters to us, the majority, is that big corporate money (such as advertising and foundation charity) is not available for such catering. Leftwing views are often opposed to corporate interests, and lefties are more resistant to advertising - that's no way to get a job with a big corporation that makes its money servicing other big corporations.
That's why hacks like Chuck Todd ('bothsides do everything') or money-chasers like Chris Wallace ('factchecking is not my job') get paid big bucks, and take up all the room on your TV - they shill for corporate interests, and deliver the rightwing pitch that attracts the advertiser's desired audience reliably.
Example: the attention paid to the semi-mythical Obama/Trump voter - a comforting narrative that attracts buyers of Ford and Dodge pickup trucks, while distorting and obscuring the physical facts and other attributes of actual news about the 2016 election.
- - -
Realistic best case scenarios are inherently political - they involve assessing what is possible.How did this discussion suddenly become politicized?
They - the corporate interests who bought the major book publishing businesses with the goal of improving their efficiency and fostering continual growth in their bottom line, who reacted to the tax law decisions of 1979 by destroying their backlists and shortening their marketing window for new titles, and so forth - often pruned first, as part of their business model: sales dropped afterwards.I don't believe that book sales volume online comes close to the volume that we once saw. Book publishers echo that. They often say that they are pruning back their catalogs and publishing fewer titles because sales no longer justify it.
Amazon's book sales were still increasing, last I could check.
Except for the books actively promoted and marketed that hit big right away, and the occasional bestseller that emerges from the niche markets they are willing to support (Harry Potter series, say).So I still think that actual book readership is dropping off a cliff.
And we are agreeing to ignore audiobooks.
Corporate marketing strategies call for elimination of product lines whose sales and profits are flat, in favor of those whose sales or profits (textbooks, say, with their easily gouged captive market) grow quarter by quarter. As sales of ordinary novels and so forth do not support and never have supported such growth, that product line will be dropped - and nobody can buy what isn't on the shelf or available in the backlist catalog.Today the basement is devoted to textbooks while books have been relegated to a smaller upper floor. The selection has declined precipitously as well, leaning towards popular titles today, as opposed to the scholarly titles of yesteryear.