Media conglomerate
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A media conglomerate describes companies that own large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet.
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A conglomerate is, by definition, a large company that consists of divisions of seemingly unrelated businesses.
It is questionable whether media companies are unrelated, as of 2007. The trend has been strongly for the sharing of various kinds of content (news, film and video, music for example). The media sector is tending to consolidate, and formerly diversified companies may appear less so as a result. Therefore the term media group may also be applied. It has not so far replaced the more traditional usage.
Some of the largest media conglomerates include:
- AT&T
- Bertelsmann
- Canwest Global
- CBS Corporation (owned by National Amusements)
- Comcast Corporation
- Fininvest
- General Electric
- Hearst Corporation
- Lagardère Media
- Liberty Media
- News Corporation
- Organizações Globo
- Grupo PRISA
- Sony
- Time Warner
- Grupo Televisa
- The Times Group (distinct from Times Newspapers of News Corporation)
- Viacom (owned by National Amusements)
- Vivendi
- E.W. Scripps Company
- The Walt Disney Company
Critics have accused the larger conglomerates of dominating media, especially news, and refusing to publicize or deem "newsworthy" information that would be harmful to their other interests, and of contributing to the merging of entertainment and news at the expense of tough coverage of serious issues. They are also accused of being a leading force for the standardization of culture (see globalization, Americanization), and they are a frequent target of criticism by partisan political groups which often perceive the news productions biased toward their foes
In response, the companies and their supporters state that they maintain a strict separation between the business end and the production end of news departments.
- Media Institutions
- http://wethemedia.edublogs.org
- A visual representation of 25 years of media mergers and how the biggest media conglomerates in the United States came to be