Page 109 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

88 Critical investigations in political economy

driven by the economic logic of market expansion and facilitated by novel digital
communication technologies (De Bens 2007). According to Bagdikian (2004: 3)
five ‘global-dimension’ conglomerates, Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation,
Viacom and Bertelsmann own most of the newspapers, magazines, book
publishers, film studios and radio and TV networks, controlling programme
production, broadcast networks, cable systems and channels. In the first edition
of his book The Media Monopoly, Bagdikian identified which companies held the
largest shares, up to 50 per cent of total, in each market and calculated that fifty
firms dominated across the media as a whole in the US. The total fell in each
subsequent edition of the book. According to McChesney (2004b: 178) the major
media markets of television networks, cable TV, music, film, newspapers, magazines
and book publishing are ‘almost all classic oligopolies with only a handful of
significant players in each market’. The two largest firms in US radio broadcasting,
Infinity (owned by Viacom) and Clear Channel, have a greater market share
than the firms ranked 3–25 combined. Clear Channel Communications run by
Randy Michaels, a former ultra right-wing ‘shock-jock’ DJ, embarked on an
acquisitions spree after radio ownership restrictions were lifted by the Tele-
communications Act 1996. By 2002 Clear owned 1,225 stations. In a formerly
diverse cable TV industry six companies now control over 80 per cent of the
market. Four firms sell almost 90 per cent of US recorded music, while six
companies account for the same share of industry revenues (McChesney 2004b).
The national press in Britain has been highly concentrated for several
decades. In 2006 the top five companies had a combined share of 87 per cent.
In 2013, the top three newspaper publishers held a 68.43 per cent share of the
daily and Sunday newspaper markets. The number of national newspaper titles,
and ownership patterns, have remained largely unchanged in the last decade.
New entrant gains from the successive waves of technological innovation have
been modest because significant market barriers remain, notably content creation
costs, marketing and benefits of scale. Between 1945 and 1995 the only long-
term entrant to the group of dominant newspaper companies was News Inter-
national (Kuhn 2007: 7). News International (which owns The Times, the Sunday
Times and the Sun) continues to command the highest share of circulation, with
31.21 per cent share, followed by Daily Mail and General Trust (inc. Lebedev)
22.11 per cent and Trinity Mirror 15.11 per cent (Press Gazette 2013). Existing
firms have also sought to restrict competition. News International’s decision to
drop the cover price of The Times from 35p to 20p in 1993 was widely
condemned as a form of ‘predatory’ price-cutting designed to weaken market
competitors and attempt to drive the only new national entrant, The Independent,
out of business. Regional newspaper titles increased from 1,295 in 2003 to 1,324
in 2005, mostly due to the emergence of free weeklies. Yet, by December 2005,
the largest five publishers by circulation covered 84 per cent of regional newspaper
circulation, up from 79 per cent in 2003 (Ofcom 2006). Given these concentra-
tion trends the next section explores the processes leading to concentration in
more detail, but we will also consider de-concentration trends before returning