Media Spiders

The majority of modern media companies are owned by the six largest media conglomerates – and by majority I mean somewhere upwards from 80%. Those six conglomerates are as follows: Time Warner, General Electric, Comcast, National Amusements, News Corporation and The Walt Disney Company. Their holding are staggering as can be seen from the “Media Family Tree posted below.


Fig 1: Media Family Tree (Advertising Ages)
This is staggering, if we focus on just The Walt Disney Company we can see they holdings include, but re not limited to: *
ABC Television, Buena Vista Distribution, Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group, Buena Vista Music Group, ESPN, SOAP net, Lifetime, Disney Channel, A&E Television Networks, ABC Family, Radio Disney, ABC Radio, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney Consumer Products, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films, Lyric Street Records, Hollywood Records, The Baby Einstein Company Hyperion Books. This is just the tip of the iceberg as many of these are media companies with many holdings of there own.
So what does it all mean? Why should I care? Well the reality of this is basically that almost all of mainstream media on television, radio and in print is controlled by a handful of people. This means that all of our news and all of the views we are presented are controlled by that same handful of people. It means that the views and values of those handful of people are going to be better represented and anything they do not agree with, will not appear in the media they control – which as I stated before is the large majority of today’s media. It is such obvious tyranny that if more people were aware of it I am sure it would be a hot topic. However this is they type of information that can hurt the very people who control the distribution of such information in the mainstream media. This is in fact the first example of the problem with giving so few people so much power. The fact that not many people know this means it has already become a problem.

Works Cited
Endicott, Craig. "100 Leading Media Companies Report; Revenue Hits $268 Billion." Advertising Age. 02 Oct. 2006. Advertising Age. 18 Nov. 2008 .
Kaufman, Ron. "Big Media 2007: For The Love of Money." Trun off Your TV. 2 June 2007. 18 Nov. 2008 .