The Rise of Specialization and Synergy

The new globalism coincided with the rise of specialization. The magazine, radio, and cable industries sought specialized markets both in the United States and overseas, in part to counter television’s mass appeal. By the 1980s, however, even television—confronted with the growing popularity of home video and cable—began niche marketing, targeting affluent eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old viewers, whose buying habits are not as stable or predictable as those of older consumers. Younger and older audiences, abandoned by the networks, were sought by other media outlets and advertisers. Magazines such as Seventeen and AARP The Magazine now flourish. Cable channels such as Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network serve the under-eighteen market, while A&E and Lifetime address viewers over age fifty and female; in addition, cable channel BET targets young African Americans, helping to define them as a consumer group. (See “Case Study: Minority and Female Media Ownership: Why Does It Matter?” on pages 464–465.)

Beyond specialization, though, what really distinguishes current media economics is the extension of synergy to international levels. Synergy typically refers to the promotion and sale of different versions of a media product across the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate (e.g., a Time Warner HBO cable special about “the making of” a Warner Brothers movie reviewed in Time magazine). However, it also refers to global companies like Sony buying up popular culture—in this case, movie studios and record labels—to play on its various electronic products. Today, synergy is the default business mode of most media companies.