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More Consolidation - 20040925

The BBC has held talks over the future of its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. They have talked with three global media giants: Time Warner, Walt Disney and Bertelsmann. To borrow a phrase with which Republicans are comfortable, "Here we go again." Again, more consolidation of the media seems headed into the hands of the giants. Why would anyone be comfortable with that?

Media Conglomerates - 20040826

The Nation made a July, 2002 report on the media conglomerates: identifying the big ten, their revenue and sources of revenue and the quality of their reporting. Some of their findings and financial data from Morningstar are summarized in the chart to the right.

Contrast the $00.42 trillion, in 2002, revenues for the big 10 in media with the $19.59 trillion, in 2000, total business receipts. (Data listed in the Statistical Abstract of the US - 2003.) That's about 2 percent of total business receipts received by the big ten media conglomerates.

Big business, corporations with receipt of $1 trillion or more that year, account for about 94 percent of all corporate receipts. Also from the the Statistical Abstract, are total receipts from Broadcasting activities (Radio, TV, Cable, Cable Programming Distribution, Film/Sound, and Online information) at 1.1 percent of all corporate receipts. Hmmm, the tail of Broadcasting may be wagging the dog of corporate activity.

The Washington Post Companyis a diversified media and education company." Their newspaper business property is the Washington Post Newspaper. They have other newspapers, magazine, education, broadcasting, cable and interactive business properties. Their NY Stock Exchange symbol is "WPO".

Morningstar lists the WPO 2002 revenue as approximately $2.6 billion. In contrast, each of the bottom three media conglomerates earned an average $15.3 billion in 2002.