NBN

The largest media conglomerate in the world is NBN, which at various times in the company’s history has stood for Network Broadcast News, Net Broadcast Network, and Near-Earth Broadcast Network. Now simply known as NBN, the corporation is headquartered right on Broadcast Square in New Angeles after relocating from SanSan in the early 30s. NBN also has offices and broadcast equipment along the entire length of the New Angeles Space Elevator, particularly at Midway Station and the terminal space station known as the Castle. NBN owns or operates five of the ten top-rated content streams worldwide. From music to threedee, news broadcasting to sitcoms, classic movies to interactive sensies, NBN does it all. NBN produces or licenses more content every day than a human being could consume in a year and boasts sophisticated secretary software agents to aid the consumer in locating the highest-quality content that best matches his user profile. NBN’s revenue streams are as complex as the web of network and broadcast infrastructure it owns. Its broad array of content and sophisticated, user-friendly delivery systems have garnered NBN an enormous number of subscribers at various membership levels in a variety of media markets. By collecting and collating viewership information and habits, NBN is also the world’s leading media and marketing research firm, with zettabytes of information on such subjects as the buying habits of thirty-year-old college-educated single mothers. NBN can sell this data to other corporations, and also provide precision-targeted advertising to that same subscriber list. NBN-produced advertising uses psychographic profiling and the latest neuroscience and braintaping techniques to promote message penetration and brand retention. The market dominance of NBN means that in most markets even non-subscribers must use NBN-owned infrastructure to access the network at all. As a result, a large percentage of data and media in all of human society passes through NBN. Privacy advocates worry that NBN has too much access and control over communications and media, and condemn NBN for its cooperation with repressive Mediterranean regimes. Some worry that NBN is using its wealth of data for purposes more nefarious than advertising, and that there is a reason why no antitrust laws were ever enforced against the corporation by U.S. or world governments. NBN is a model of corporate efficiency, agile and responsive to an ever-changing marketplace. It does more than simply read the market; it steers it.