Page 136 - Culture Society and the Media

126 CONTROL OF THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRIES
The central truth about newspapers (is) that they cannot go beyond the
range of their readers. It is therefore the readers, in the end, who are the
figures of power…. That is the answer to the riddle of proprietorial
influence. Where it survives at all, it must still defer to the influence of
readers…. The broad shape and nature of the press is ultimately
determined by no one but its readers. (Whale, 1977, p. 82–5)
It is with the audience and not with the media that the power resides….
By being constantly polled, the audience determines the type of
programming that is offered by television. Because the audience’s attention
is so essential to the success of the system, its influence over the media is
exercised in its day-to-day operation rather than as some vague, intangible
desire on the part of those who own the media. (Seiden, 1974, p. 5)

Having outlined the main approaches to the question of corporate control we can
now begin to examine them in more detail and see how adequate they are
conceptually and how well they fit the available empirical evidence.

BEYOND CAPITALISM? THE IDEA OF ‘THE
MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION’
The second half of the nineteenth century saw an important shift in the nature of
industrial enterprise. Whereas in the earlier part of the century most firms were
owned by individuals or families, the Victorian era saw the rapid development of
the joint-stock company or corporation in which entrepreneurs expanded their
capital-base by selling shares in their enterprises to outsiders with money to
invest. These shareholders became the legal owners of the company. As the
century progressed, this new system rapidly gained ground in all sectors of
industry including the major mass medium of the time—the press. With the
repeal of the newspaper taxes and the changes in company law in the mid 1850s,
investing in newspapers became both easier and more attractive. The next thirty
years saw the launching of well over four hundred press companies and by the
end of the century most publishers had adopted some form of joint-stock
organization (Lee, 1976, p. 79–80). By then, a number had also begun to offer
shares not only to small groups of select investors but to the general public. The
first significant media company to ‘go public’ in Britain was Northcliffe’s Daily
Mail in 1897.
As well as dispersing the legal ownership of companies among a steadily
widening group of shareholders, the rise of the modern corporation significantly
altered the relationship between ownership and control. Unlike the old style
owner-entrepreneurs who had actively intervened in the routine running of their
enterprises, the new shareholder-proprietors tended to be ‘absentee owners’, who
left the business of supervising production to paid professional managers. Marx
was one of the first commentators to highlight this development, noting that: