IS 2007 THE YEAR THE MEDIA CONGLOMERATE FINALLY BROKE?
December 30th 2007 22:26
BusinessWeek writer Jon Fine has made an interesting call: he has declared “2007 looks like the year the media conglomerate finally broke.”
This call comes just a week after America's Federal Communications Commission approved a plan to lift laws barring companies from owning newspapers and TV stations in the same city, and sparked outrage in those who see this as a gateway to further media consolidation.
Fine concedes there were a few big deals in 2007: News Corp-Dow Jones, Reuters-Thomson, and the pending Sirius-XM merger.
But he concluded that “the narrative overwhelmingly centred around companies slimming down or splitting up.”
He said the limitations of synergy and scale have long been clear and pointed out that the Tribune Co bought Times Mirror in 2000 for more than $US8 billion, hoping newspaper and TV duopolies in cities like LA and Chicago would make for more robust national ad sales.
That never happened.
- From mediaBlab
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