Page 112 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Concentration and commercialisation 91

developments of content repurposing that the Internet and digitalisation have
greatly facilitated. Herman and McChesney (1997: 54) identify two main kinds of
‘profit potential’ driving merger activity. The first is cost savings arising from ‘fuller
utilization of existing personnel, facilities and “content” resources’. The second is
the combined benefits of synergy, ‘the exploitation of new opportunities for
cross-selling, cross-promotion, and privileged access’. Synergy, like convergence,
was presented (especially during the 1980s and 1990s) as an imperative to justify
liberalisation of communications policy, and like ‘convergence’ it provided a
more palatable description for monopolisation and concentration.
The chief reasons for conglomeration and corporate synergy have been the
ability to achieve economies of scale and scope, combined with a desire to limit
risks from investment or competition (Winseck 2008: 42; Kunz 2007: 10–13).
Synergy ‘includes the ability of a corporation to successfully merge cultural customs,
machine code, methods of operation, and external network associations across
multiple holdings’ (Arsenault 2012: 111). Combining cross-media, cross-platform
assets has also been driven by marketing and promotion. Conglomerates can offer
advertisers packages that keeps ad finance within the corporate family and help to
move it across a portfolio of publishing opportunities (see chapter six). As well as
cross-selling advertising another key purpose is cross-promotion of media firms’
own and allied content and services. With the expansion of digital platforms and
services, bringing together users with services and purchasing opportunities has
placed a premium on the ability of firms to cross-promote (Hardy 2010a, 2013a).

Complexity and counter-trends
So far I have outlined trends and processes of media conglomeration and con-
centration. However, changes across media industries have been more varied,
complex and uncertain; to understand this we need to incorporate other factors
and influences affecting media firms across different sectors. If tendencies
towards integration are clear, corporate strategies and market processes have
also involved disintegration, demergers, fragmentation and the creation of new
kinds of networks and interdependencies between firms. All these processes must
also be understood in the context of uncertainties and risks, the unpredictability
and high levels of failure of ideas, products, firms and operations. This is essen-
tial in order to understand market dynamics and corporate strategies as well as
to account for their highly varied performance and outcomes in the face of
competition for audiences and resources (Hesmondhalgh 2013; Croteau and
Hoynes 2006).

Uncertainty and risk
The media mergers of the 1980s and 1990s have been described as largely
defensive moves (Curran 2002), and as ‘bulking up for digital’ (Tunstall and
Machin 1999) – attempts to manage the costs and risks associated with