Reaction - The Economics of the Media Industry

In Croteau and Hoynes’s “Media Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences” (2012), Chapter 2, titled “The Economics of the Media Industry”, evokes the idea of media ownership, and specifically the growing tendencies of concentration, integration and convergence of media ownership (p.33-58).

The idea of concentration of media ownership comes from the fact that most media is owned by very few large corporations (p.34). For example, U.S. statistics from 2001 state that one company, Gannett Co. Inc., owned 97 publications across the country that circulated at 7.8 million publications per day (p.36). These publications can circulate without showing any sign of belonging to the same corporation (p.38).  

Another trend that goes hand in hand with concentration is conglomeration. With the growing concentration of ownership meaning growth of corporations, the latter start integrating other industries that affect media, in a horizontal or vertical way (p.40). An example of a vertical integration given in the book is a movie company that might incorporate "talent agencies, production studios, theater chains, videocassette manufacturing plants, and a chain of video rental stores" (p.40). An example of horizontal integration is presented as a company acquiring different sorts of media, such as "magazines, television stations, book publishers, record labels...", etc. (p.40).

These trends happen because they’re beneficial for the companies in an economical way, since concentrated ownership allows better working relationships between different mediums, controlling the functioning of every aspect of the industry in order to assure maximum profit (p.44).

I think that this idea of media ownership concentration needs to be addressed since, while being beneficial to the companies, it is certainly not beneficial for the public since it is very content-limiting. The fact of one corporation owning so much means of sharing content leads to only one type of story/narrative, the one that best suits the interest of the company, being shared on so many platforms. People being unaware of media ownership also means that the public can be deceived into thinking a narrative is real/the best one because it is shared by many different media outlets, while in reality it could be that they all fall under the same ownership. This is a very easy way for corporations to spread propaganda.

Concentration and congregation of media ownership also limits outlets for content creators. An example is that a book publisher that is owned by a corporation that also owns a movie production company might reject a perfectly good book’s prospects of being published because it has limited potential of being turned into a movie, while another less-good book might get published because it has the potential of being turned into a movie, and thus could benefit both divisions of the company.

In short and to put it bluntly, I think the trend of media ownership concentration is just another example of how capitalist systems work to benefit corporations while harming the public.

Reference

Croteau, D., & Hoynes, W. (2012). Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences. London: Sage Publications Ltd.