From Fifty to a Few: The Most Dominant Media Corporations

When Ben Bagdikian wrote the first edition of The Media Monopoly, published in 1983, he warned of the chilling control wielded by the fifty elite corporations that owned most of the U.S. mass media. By the publication of the book’s seventh edition in 2004, the number of corporations controlling most of America’s daily newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies had dropped from fifty to five. Today, most of the leading corporations have a high profile in the United States, particularly through ownership of television networks: Time Warner (CW), Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), CBS Corporation (CBS and CW), and Comcast/NBC Universal (NBC).

The creep of consolidation over the past few decades requires us to think differently about how we experience the mass media on a daily basis. Potential conflicts of interest abound. For example, should we trust how NBC News covers Comcast or how ABC News covers Disney? Should we be wary if Time magazine hypes a Warner Brothers film? More important, what actions can we take to ensure that the mass media function not just as successful businesses for stockholders but also as a necessary part of our democracy?

To help you get a better understanding of how our media landscape is changing, look at the table below that lists the Top 10 media companies for 1980, 1997, and 2012. What patterns do you notice? How does this reflect larger trends in the media? For example, seven of the major companies in 1980 were mostly print businesses, but what about in 2012? Most of the large media companies have been profiled here and in Chapters 2 to 10 (illustrating their principal holdings). While the subsidiaries of these companies often change, the charts demonstrate the wide reach of today’s large conglomerations. To get a better understanding of how the largest media corporations relate to one another and the larger world, see the folded insert at the beginning of the book.

TOP 10 U.S. MEDIA COMPANIES, 1980, 1997, 2012*

Sources: Ad Age’s 100 Leading Media Companies, December 7, 1981; “100 Companies by Media Revenue,” Advertising Age, August 18, 1997; “Media 100,” Advertising Age, December 31, 2012.

*Note: The revenue in $billions is based on total net U.S. media revenue and does not include nonmedia and international revenue.