Page 143 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 133
As I have shown elsewhere (Murdock, 1980), the national press, as one of the
oldest media sectors, is still largely dominated by companies controlled by the
descendants of the original founding families and their associates. In fact, five out
of the top seven concerns are of this type (they are: Associated Newspapers, The
Daily Telegraph Limited, The Thomson Organisation, News International and
S.Pearson and Son). However, the resilience of individual ownership is by no
means confined to the press or to the British media. The American entertainment
industries also boast a number of wellknown instances of proprietal power. They
include: Mr Kirk Kerkorian, who has a 25.5 per cent stake in Columbia Pictures
and a sizeable stake in another Hollywood major, MGM; and Mr William Paley,
chairman and key stockholder in CBS Inc., the major music publishing and
commercial broadcasting company (see Halberstam, 1976).
Proprietorial interests are also well to the fore in Britain’s commercial
television industry. This is a particularly relevant case given the managerialist
argument that the withering-away of owner power is a developing trend which is
likely to be furthest advanced in the most recently established branches of
economic activity.
As Table 2 shows, almost all the leading corporations involved in commercial
television display a highly-concentrated pattern of ownership centred on
identifiable groups of proprietary interests. Indeed, five out of the eight qualify
as ‘owner controlled’, even on Berle and Means’s restrictive definition. In fact,
the only major holding company that approximates to the managerialist model is
EMI, although the presence of substantial nominee holdings make it impossible
to assess the real extent of owner interests. However, the table also shows that
the pattern of ownership is rather more variable than in the press. This reflects
both the general shifts in share ownership since the mid-1950s when commercial
television was first launched, and the specific characteristics of investment in the
industry (notably the heavy involvement of newspaper companies and
corporations engaged in set rental and entertainment). In three out of the eight
leading concerns (Granada, Associated Communications and Scottish
Television) the locus of proprietorial control lies with the leading members of the
boards. In all but one of the remainder, control is held by the major institutional
investors, operating through their representatives on the relevant boards. The
current board of Southern Television, for example, includes the chairmen of two
of the major investors—The Rank Organisation and D.C.Thomson (the Scottish
press company)—and the managing director of the third, Associated
Newspapers. Similarly, Lord Hartwell, the deputy chairman of LWT (Holdings),
is also the chairman of one of the company’s major shareholders, The Daily
Telegraph Ltd, while the Anglia Group is headed by the Marquis Townsend of
Raynham, vice-chairman of one of the leading investors, Norwich Union Life
Insurance. As I have shown elsewhere (Murdock, 1979), these shareholding and
directorial links between media companies and other leading corporations are by
no means unique to television. On the contrary, they are part of an expanding