1. Power and Counter- Power in Global Media

5. Michael Eisner (formerly Disney) Ted Turner (CNN-Time Warner) Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, (Mediaset) Thomas Middelhoff (Bertelsmann) Prince Waleed bin Talal (Rotana)

6. Global Media Market The 1980s and 90s saw a lot of mergers and buyouts of media and entertainment companies. Vertical vs. Horizontal integration Vertical Integration: ownership across various industries and verticals, such as distribution networks, toys and clothing manufacture and/or retailing etc. Maximizing profit (e.g. Viacom) Horizontal Integration: ownership in the same line of production-film studio buying another studio

7. The Mighty 7 (2011 revenue) * Disney (40.1 billion) * Time Warner (29 billion) * Viacom (market value: $30 billion) * General Electric (former owner of NBC, market value: $147 billion) * News Corporation ($33.4 billion) *Google (37.9 billion) * Microsoft (69.94 billion)

8. Vertical Integration Viacom

9. Global Media Market Robert McChesney: First Tier: (Global Reach) AOL-Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corporation, TCI, General Electric, Sony, Seagram Second tier: (business at national/regional/niche level) Kirch, Thomson, Globo, Televisa, Canal Plus, Hachette, BBC, etc. The second tier is often aided in its expansion by the 1st tier

10. Why a media oligopoly? Deregulation since the 1980s: ATT was dissolved in 1984 only to allow for other companies to consolidate more Progress in media technologies Search for economies of scale

11. Telecommunications Act of 1996: foreign ownership was allowed Cross-industry ownership rules were relaxed: phone and cable now could merge Lower prices or more mergers?

12. Impact Oligopolization of global media: 7 companies : 75% of the US tv audience and 90% of tv news audience 6 studios: 90% of American film revenues 4 major record label companies: 80% of record revenues (EMI was recently bought by Universal Music Group) 1 radio behemoth (Clear Channel): 105 million listeners (12-1,214 stations 96’ Act)

13. Impact pay-per basis versus universal service Digital divide both domestically and globally Does free market necessarily lead to a democratic market of ideas? Habermas’ public sphere: unfettered discourse? Media space where consensus and deliberation are reached. What can you do in the face of oligopoly?

14. Counter-power The people strike back: participatory culture? Diffusion of information control: The Media: social space where power is decided; Horizontal comm: mass self- communication

15. Is this counter- power? “...any post in the Internet, regardless of the intention of its author, becomes a bottle drifting in the ocean of global communication, a message susceptible of being received and reprocessed in unexpected ways.” (Castells: 247)

16. Counter-Power? Fordist model of information production is over: p2p comm. Produsing instead of producing. ohmynews.com Bondy Blog Google Bombs Old media Barons can strike back: Newscorp buying Myspace; Google and YouTube, Yahoo and Flickr and Del.icio.us

17. So, should we worry about global media consolidation in the age of horizontal communication?