Jan 16 2009
Know the Big Five Media Companies
My Thirteenth Rule of Media Relations is Realize that all major media outlets are owned by one of five corporations. Burning a bridge at the Chicago Tribune probably means bad reviews in New York Newsday and KTLA-TV in Los Angeles.
The media world is small. The journalism industry often works like other industries. Due to consolidations, mergers and takeovers, there are fewer gasoline companies, fast food corporations and shoe makers.
You may have heard that Circuit City–under bankruptcy protection since last year–announced it will liquidate its assets and close its business. About 35,000 employees will be out of work. Meanwhile, Best Buy’s stock rose sharply during Friday’s trading since its chief rival in the consumer electronics market is about to exist no longer.
Know the names Bertelsmann, Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner and Viacom. If you like books, movies, music, newspapers and television, the odds are good you’re consuming produced by one of those companies.
Karl Marx said capitalism would inevitably lead to one or a few surviving companies within each industry. The remaining businesses would then be able to gouge the public since their competition had been eliminated.
In many fields, Marx proved to be correct. Monopolies and oligopolies are dangerous. Understand when developing a media strategy that relationships can be very tight among organizations that don’t seem to be connected. Two outlets that share a board of directors are closely related.
Marx may have proved to be correct in the short term, but the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way. That is what capitalism is all about.
When the American people get tired of paying higher prices, they revolt. Remember the Boston Tea Party?