Page 117 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

96 Critical investigations in political economy

Corporation to launch a localised, Korean-language Disney TV channel.
Licensing arrangements are another form, in which TNMCs authorise licensees
to distribute their copyrighted products. A third variant is an equity alliance,
formed when a TNMC acquires part-ownership of a national media corporation
through investment. Like concentration, there is nothing new about joint ventures
but this mode of operating increased significantly from the 1990s. Critical scholars
have also focused on another forms of alliance, the corporate interlocking arising
from participation in boards of management of ‘competitor’ media interests,
marketers and other corporate media interests (Bagdikian 2004; Bettig and Hall
2012, chapter six).

Presence of small firms
Amongst the counter-tendencies to concentration, it has been argued, is a
flourishing of small firms (Hesmondhalgh 2013: 209–12). The creative conception
stage of the production of cultural products in some industries (music) remains
small scale with low barriers to entry. Hesmondhalgh argues that CPE perspectives
that focus on conglomeration and integration ‘often underestimate the sig-
nificance of small companies’, which are vital in terms of the number of people
they employ, the potential to foster innovation and the emphasis many place on
‘institutional independence’ (2013: 210), notably in indie cinema and significant
parts of music making where there is resistance to commodification amongst
producers, performers and audiences. Small firms can be sources of creativity,
innovation and cultural diversity throughout their operations. We need a media
political economy that is engaged with the totality of cultural production and
whose account of problems is properly sensitive to the diversity of conditions for
creativity. One requirement is to examine market relations and inter-
dependencies between small and large firms. Small firms’ institutional autonomy
is often vulnerable to the market dominance and strategies of conglomeration.
Large corporations increasingly sub-contract to SMEs. Interdependencies
between large corporations and small firms have also featured heavily in various
phases of development of commercial film, TV and recorded music industries,
with production, licensing, finance and distribution deals between majors and
‘independents’. This highlights the importance of identifying different kinds of
organisation of firms and relations between these across the various cultural
industries. In sectors like publishing and parts of the music industry, the con-
ception stage can be small scale, ‘relatively inexpensive’ and take place under
‘relatively autonomous conditions’. Other factors include market opportunities
and barriers to entry, for instance in markets being shaken up by new digital
technologies, greater access to venture capital for SMEs, as well as deconvergence
and disintegration processes in some vertically integrated companies. Above all,
the promise of digital abundance has masked continuing patterns of corporate
dominance. Despite the proliferation of independent music distribution online,
Vivendi (owner of Universal Music), Sony Entertainment, EMI Group and