Media Empires

What distinguishes just another media company from a multinational media empire? I believe it is through strong use of horizontal integration. This is defined as “the merger of companies at the same stage of production in the same or different industries.” (Business Dictionary, 2012)

These major media empires like Sony, Viacom, Time Warner, Walt Disney and Newscorp are all involved in cross-media insemination. These empires own companies throughout the film, TV, radio, print and many other media outlets. Which through horizontal integration only makes the strong, stronger and the weak, weaker.

These five main media companies control the majority of what you see, hear and read about. For example, Sony Corporation owns Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment. In the past they have used this as an advantage to get their music from Sony Music Entertainment out there on countless amounts of their movies and TV shows.

“A stable oligopoly provides the best balance between competition and chaos. Most media industries under liberal capitalism operate this way. A small number of companies control the ways in which the industry works” (Steven, 2003, p. 42)  I believe this is how the media empires are running at the moment, and with new media developing new technology it is only making them bigger and bigger as they are the only ones able to afford to run media.

 Reference:

Business Dictionary, 2012, <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/horizontal-integration.html> , retrieved 9 August 2012.

Steven, P 2003, ‘Political economy: the howling, brawling, global market place’, The no-nonsense guide to global media2003, New Internationalist/Verso, Oxford, pp. 37-59