Media ownership in the USA
As depicted in the graph above, the number of corporations owning the majority of U.S. media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years. Here are the top corporations evolving around the world and the assets they own.
“A list of the properties controlled by AOL Time Warner takes ten typed pages listing 292 separate companies and subsidiaries. Of these, twenty-two are joint ventures with other major corporations involved in varying degrees with media operations. These partners include 3Com, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Citigroup, Ticketmaster, American Express, Homestore, Sony, Viva, Bertelsmann, Polygram, and Amazon.com. Some of the more familiar fully owned properties of Time Warner include Book-of-the-Month Club; Little, Brown publishers; HBO, with its seven channels; CNN; seven specialized and foreign-language channels; Road Runner; Warner Brothers Studios; Weight Watchers; Popular Science; and fifty-two different record labels.”
- Ben Bagdikan, The New Media Monopoly
64 magazines, including Time, Life, People, MAD Magazine and DC Comics
Warner Bros, New Line and Fine Line Features in cinema
More than 40 music labels including Warner Bros, Atlantic and Elektra
Many television networks such as WB Networks, HBO, Cinemax, TNT, Cartoon Network andCNN
Madonna, Sean Paul, The White Stripes
Viacom owns:
CBS, MTV, MTV2, UPN, VH1, Showtime, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, TNN, CMT and BET
Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films
Blockbuster Videos
1800 screens in theaters through Famous Players
“Disney ownership of a hockey team called The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim does not begin to describe the vastness of the kingdom. Hollywood is still its symbolic heart, with eight movie production studios and distributors: Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax, Buena Vista Home Video, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Buena Vista International, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures.
The Walt Disney Company controls eight book house imprints under Walt Disney Company Book Publishing and ABC Publishing Group; seventeen magazines; the ABC Television Network, with ten owned and operated stations of its own including in the five top markets; thirty radio stations, including all the major markets; eleven cable channels, including Disney, ESPN (jointly), A&E, and the History Channel; thirteen international broadcast channels stretching from Australia to Brazil; seven production and sports units around the world; and seventeen Internet sites, including the ABC group, ESPN.sportszone, NFL.com, NBAZ.com, and NASCAR.com. Its five music groups include the Buena Vista, Lyric Street, and Walt Disney labels, and live theater productions growing out of the movies The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and King David.”
- Ibid
The Walt Disney Company owns:
ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E, History Channel
Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Dimensionand Buena Vista International
Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers
Vivendi Universal owns:
27% of US music sales, labels include: Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Island, Def Jam, MCA, Mercury, Motown and Universal
Universal Studios, Studio Canal, Polygram Films, Canal +
Numerous internet and cell phone companies
Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z
Sony owns:
Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics
15% of US Music sales, labels include Columbia, Epic, Sony, Arista, Jive and RCA Records
Beyonce, Shakira, Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera
A limited number of actors in the cultural industry means a limited amount of viewpoints and ideas making their way to the general public. It also means that a single message can easily saturate all forms of media to generate consent (i.e. “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”).
