Sextons lemma: sooner or later everything is crossposted to talk.politics.misc.
(Of course I'm sure Mike Godwin said it first)
At 01:20 AM 12/7/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>FYI:
>
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: The Global Media Dominators
>Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1999 18:15:47 -0500
>From: enrique <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Newsgroups:
>alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics.reform,alt
>.politics.greens,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.anarchism,alt.journalism,alt.r
>eligion,talk.politics.misc
>
>
>The Global Media Giants
>The nine firms that dominate the world
> by Robert McChesney
> from Extra the magazine of FAIR, Nov/Dec 1997
>
>A specter now haunts the world: a global commercial media system dominated
>by a small number of super-powerful, mostly U.S.-based transnational media
>corporations. It is a system that works to advance l the cause of the
>global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism
>and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or long-run
>corporate interests. It is a disaster for anything but the most superficial
>notion of democracy-a democracy where, to paraphrase John Jay's maxim,
>those who own the world ought to govern it.
>
>The global commercial system is a very recent development. Until the 1980s,
>media systems were generally national in scope. While there have been
>imports of books, films, music and TV shows for decades, the basic
>broadcasting systems and newspaper industries were domestically owned and
>regulated. Beginning in the 1980s, pressure from the IMF, World Bank and
>U.S. government to deregulate and privatize media and communication systems
>coincided with new satellite and digital technologies, resulting in the
>rise of transnational media giants.
>
>How quickly has the global media system emerged? The two largest media
>firms in the world, Time Warner and Disney, generated around 15 percent of
>their income outside of the United States in 1990. By 1997, that figure was
>in the 30 percent-35 percent range. Both firms expect to do a majority of
>their business abroad at some point in the next decade.
>
>The global media system is now dominated by a first tier of nine giant
>firms. The five largest are Time Warner (1997 sales: $24 billion),
>Bertelsmann ($15 billion), Disney ($22 billion), Viacom ($13 billion), and
>Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation ($11 billion).
>
>Besides needing global scope to compete, the rules of thumb for global
>media giants are twofold: First, get bigger so you dominate markets and
>your competition can't buy you out. Firms like Disney and Time Warner have
>almost tripled in size this decade.
>
>Second, have interests in numerous media industries, such as film
>production, book publishing, music, TV channels and networks, retail
>stores, amusement parks, magazines, newspapers and the like. The profit
>whole for the global media giant can be vastly greater than the sum of the
>media parts. A film, for example, should also generate a soundtrack, a
>book, and merchandise, and possibly spin-off TV shows, CD-ROMs, video games
>and amusement park rides. Firms that do not have conglomerated media
>holdings simply cannot compete in this market.
>
>The first tier is rounded out by TCI, the largest U.S. cable company that
>also has U.S. and global media holdings in scores of ventures too numerous
>to mention. The other three first-tier glob al media firms are all part of
>much larger industrial corporate powerhouses: General Electric (1997 sales:
>$80 billion), owner of NBC; Sony (1997 sales: $48 billion), owner of
>Columbia & TriStar Pictures and major recording interests; and Seagram
>(1997 sales: $14 billion), owner of Universal film and music interests. The
>media holdings of these last four firms do between $6 billion and $9
>billion in business per year. While they are not as diverse as the media
>holdings of the first five global media giants, these four firms have
>global distribution and production in the areas where they compete. And
>firms like Sony and GE have the resources to make deals to get a lot bigger
>very quickly if they so desire.
>
>Behind these firms is a second tier of some three or four dozen media firms
>that do between $1 billion and $8 billion per year in media-related
>business. These firms tend to have national or regional strongholds or to
>specialize in global niche markets. About one-half of them come from North
>America, including the likes of Westinghouse (CBS), the New York Times Co.,
>Hearst, Comcast and Gannett. Most of the rest come from Europe, with a
>handful based in East Asia and Latin America.
>
>In short, the overwhelming majority (in revenue terms) of the world's film
>production, TV show production, cable channel ownership, cable and
>satellite system ownership, book publishing, magazine publishing and music
>production is provided by these 50 or so firms, and the first nine firms
>thoroughly dominate many of these sectors. By any standard of democracy,
>such a concentration of media power is troubling, if not unacceptable.
>
>But that hardly explains how concentrated and uncompetitive this global
>media power actually is. In addition, these firms are all actively engaged
>in equity joint ventures where they share ownership of concerns with their
>"competitors" so as to reduce competition and risk. Each of the nine
>first-tier media giants, for example, has joint ventures with, on average,
>two-thirds of the other eight first-tier media giants. And the second tier
>is every bit as aggressive about making joint ventures. (See chart below
>for the extent of joint ventures between media giants.)
>
>We are the world
>
>In some ways, the emerging global commercial media system is not an
>entirely negative proposition. It occasionally promotes anti-racist,
>anti-sexist or anti-authoritarian messages that can be welcome in some of
>the more repressive corners of the world. But on balance the system has
>minimal interest in journalism or public affairs except for that which
>serves the business and upper-middle classes, and it privileges just a few
>lucrative genres that it can do quite well-like sports, light entertainment
>and action movies-over other fare. Even at its best the entire system is
>saturated by a hyper-commercialism, a veritable commercial carpet bombing
>of every aspect of human life. As the C.E.O. of Westinghouse put it
>(Advertising Age, 2/3/97), "We are here to serve advertisers. That is our
>raison d'etre."
>
>Some once posited that the rise of the Internet would eliminate the
>monopoly power of the global media giants. Such talk has declined recently
>as the largest media, telecommunication and computer firms have done
>everything within their immense powers to colonize the Internet, or at
>least neutralize its threat. The global media cartel may be evolving into a
>global communication cartel. But the entire global media and communication
>system is still in flux. While we are probably not too far from
>crystallization, there will likely be considerable merger and joint venture
>activity in the coming years. Indeed, by the time you read this, there may
>already be some shifts in who owns what or whom.
>
>What is tragic is that this entire process of global media concentration
>has taken place with little public debate, especially in the U.S., despite
>the clear implications for politics and culture. After World War II, the
>Allies restricted media concentration in occupied Germany and Japan because
>they noted that such concentration promoted anti-democratic, even fascist,
>political cultures. It may be time for the United States and everyone else
>to take a dose of that medicine. But for that to happen will require
>concerted effort to educate and organize people around media issues. That
>is the task before us.
>
>
>This article is based on The Global Media: The New Missionaries of
>Corporate Capitalism (Cassell, 1997), co-authored with Edward S. Herman.
>
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Jay Fenello,
>New Media Relations
>------------------------------------
>http://www.fenello.com 770-392-9480
>
>"We are creating the most significant new jurisdiction
>we've known since the Louisiana purchase, yet we are
>building it just outside the constitution's review."
> -- Larry Lessig, Harvard Law School, on ICANN
>
>
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