national and local sources. Compaine argues that, based on economic metrics such as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the media industry is not very highly concentrated and did not become more concentrated during the 1990s and 2000s. Compaine also points out that most media mergers are not purely acquisitions, but also include divestitures. The "Big five" American public distrust in the media Trust in the media declined in the 1970s, and then again in the 2000s. Since the 2000s, distrust in the media has been polarized, as Republicans have grown substantially more distrustful of the media than Democrats. United Kingdom In the UK, during 1922, after the closure of many radio stations, the British Broadcasting Corporation started its first daily radio transmission and started to grow an audience. Later that year John Reith, a Scottish engineer, would be appointed the first General Manager for the BBC. Later on January 1, 1927 the BBC was fully established by Royal Charter and renamed the British Broadcasting Corporation with Reith as the first Director-General. During November 1936 the BBC began to expand into television broadcasting and was the first broadcaster to start the trend of a regularly scheduled TV service. Today the BBC is one of two chartered public broadcasting companies in the United Kingdom. The second is ITV, Independent Television, which was established in 1955 as the first public commercial television company after the Television act of 1954 in an effort to break up the monopoly the BBC had on television broadcasting, gaining fifteen regional broadcasting licenses in less than twenty years. Today the BBC and ITV are the two free to air digital services offered to everyone in the United Kingdom and each other's biggest competitors. The BBC has nine national television channels, BBC three, the first channel to switch from television to online, an interactive channel, ten national and forty local radio stations, BBC Online, and BBC Worldwide. ITV currently holds thirteen of the fifteen regional broadcasting licenses in the United Kingdom that carries their multiple channels including ITV, ITVhub, ITV2, ITVBe, ITV 3, ITV4, CITV, ITV Encore, Britbox, a video-on-demand service in collaboration with the BBC to bring British television content to the United States and Canada, and Cirkus, their own video-on-demand service. See also Agenda-setting theory Alternative media Big Three television networks Concentration of media ownership Deregulation Fake news Freedom of speech Freedom of the press Influence of mass media