Page 108 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Concentration and commercialisation 87

top fifty transnational media conglomerates (TNMCs) without headquarters in
the US are located in Japan (Sony, NHK, TV Asahi, Nippon TV, Tokyo
Broadcasting System, TV Tokyo, Fuji Television), the United Kingdom (BBC,
Pearson, ITV), France (Vivendi), Germany (Bertelsmann), Canada (BCE-CTV,
Rogers Communication, Shaw Communication, Quebecor), Italy (Mediaset),
India (Bennet Coleman, Zee), Brazil (RedeGlobo, Abril), Mexico (Grupo Televisa,
TV Azteca) and China (CCTV, Shanghai Media Group, Phoenix TV)
(Arsenault and Castells 2008).
McChesney (2002: 154) argues that many media systems are dominated by a
combination of first tier global firms and a ‘second tier’ of large regional operators.
Thousands of smaller companies remain, but for Herman and McChesney
(1997), the emerging system is a tiered one in which a second tier of some eighty
national or regional companies, with extensive ties to the top firms, operates
within a system of structural dependency that acts upon the third tier of smaller
firms. The emerging ‘global media system’ includes ‘an unprecedented array of
(mainly new) regional and local producers and distributors … but [is] dominated
by a handful of giant enterprises – diversified entertainment conglomerates’
(Schiller 2006: 140). The cultural implications of TNC activities is considered
further (chapter seven), but our focus here is on ownership and integration.
Examples of such corporate alliances include News Corporation’s partnership
with Globo in Brazil and Mexico’s Grupo Televisa’s links with North American
firms such as Univision (although limited by US law to a 25 per cent share), as well
as with News Corporation, through the loss-making pay-TV venture Innova.
However, other corporate networks show geocultural linkages of language, history,
trade, conquest and colonialism. For instance, Angolan capital investment in
Portuguese media illustrates a reverse corporate colonialism (Figueiras and
Ribeiro 2013). Second tier firms such as Televisa and Grupo Clarín (Argentina)
hold dominant shares of national, regional and geocultural media markets.
Another driver has been the financialisation of capital, as investors have looked
for profits in foreign markets. There has been a close relationship between
finance capital and the US film industry since its inception but overseas activity
has increased, with US financial institutions buying foreign theatres and film
distribution companies, sharing risks and profit with local capital. US banks
seeking profits overseas assisted efforts by Hollywood to invest widely (Miller
et al. 2005: 124).

Concentration of ownership

Concentration of media ownership is not a new phenomenon, as is evident from
studies of press industrialisation in the nineteenth century (Baldasty 1992;
Curran and Seaton 2010), or the 1920s Hollywood studio system (Schatz 1997),
but neither has it gone away in a supposed era of digital proliferation. On the
contrary, the recent phase of megamergers between traditional media companies,
telecommunications and cable operators, and Internet businesses, has been