Notes for "Cooperative Integration: A Structural Geography of Primetime Program Production and Broadcast"

¹Stephen P. Borgatti, Martin G. Everett, and Linton C. Freeman, UCINET 5.0 Version 1.00 (Natick: Analytic Technologies, 1999)

²Eli. M. Noam and Robert N. Freeman, “The Media Monopoly and Other Myths,” Television Quarterly 29:1 (1997): 18-23. Both of these authors have published works concerning the overstatement of concentration in the media industries. Eli Noam has published articles with the Cato Institute, an organization dedicated to limited government and free markets (http://www.cato.org/about/about.html). He has served on countless government boards concerning communications and is thus in a position to affect policy not only through his research, but through his placement in policymaking entities. His work is important because it may directly influence policy shifts. In addition, though it is accepted in many academic disciplines that the media is becoming more concentrated, employing Noam and Freeman’s (1997) academic work illustrates that it is not as accepted as we may believe.

³The authors state that “This is probably the most detailed study ever of media concentration in America,” (19) when referring to the aggregated data of market share numbers for over 60 sub-industries from telecommunications services to newspapers. This may in fact be true as an overall look at the broadly defined information industry. However, in this article, the authors do not specify which are the top four firms.

⁴Herbert .H. Howard, “The 1996 Telecommunications Act and TV station Ownership: 1 Year Later,” The Journal of Media Economics 11:3 (1998): 26.

⁵While Howard is discussing the trend in station groups, market shares, as indicated by Noam and Freeman seem to follow a similar pattern, though the latter authors do not offer that with the decrease in the top four firm shares in the three major networks there may have been an increase in individual ownership of other television and cable networks; something that the study in this paper indicates.

⁶The term, motion pictures, is used in the company directories I used for this study to refer to all moving picture productions, including television productions. There is not a category specifically for television moving pictures.

⁷Noam and Freeman, “The Media Monopoly.”

⁸Robert W. McChesney, “The New Global Media: It’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates,” The Nation Special Issue (November 29 1999): 11-15. Michael Schapiro, “The Cable Guise: When Communism Crashed, HBO Rewrote the Rules,” The Nation Special Issue (November 29 1999): 20-25.

⁹Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

¹⁰Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

¹¹Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1985). Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam Books, 1967). James Twitchell, Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America (New York: Columbia, 1992).

¹²Theodor Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, eds. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt. (New York: Continuum, 1982). James Twitchell, Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America (New York: Columbia, 1992).

¹³Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). Theodor Adorno, “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, eds. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982). Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1972).

¹⁴Georg O. Ramstad, “A Model for Structural Analysis of the Media Market,” The Journal of Media Economics 10 (3, 1997): 45-50.

¹⁵William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby, “All Hits Are Flukes”: Institutionalized Decision Making and the Rhetoric of Network Prime-Time Program Development,” American Journal of Sociology 99 (March 1994): 1287-1313.

¹⁶John. W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology 83 (September 1977): 340-63.

¹⁷David Crouteau and William Hoynes, Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 1997). William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby, “Controlling Primetime: Organizational Concentration and Network Television Programming Strategies,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 43 (December 2003): 35-51.

¹⁸David Crouteau and William Hoynes, Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 1997).

¹⁹Bielby and Bielby, “All Hits Are Flukes.”

²⁰Michael Schrage, “Innovation The Lost Opportunity of Fin/Syn Reform,” Los Angeles Times 8 April 1991, 2.

²¹Jens Cavallin, “European Policies and Regulations on Media Concentration,” International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, 1 (1998): 3.

²²Larry Collette and Barry Litman, “The Peculiar Economics of New Broadcast Network Entry: The Case of United Paramount and Warner Bros,” The Journal of Media Economics, 10:1 (1997): 3-22.

²³Neil Hickey, “So Big: The Telecommunications Act at Year One,” Columbia Journalism Review (January/February 1997):2. Lawerence Gasman, “The Telecommunications Act of 1996,” The Cato Review of Business & Government (2002, Retrieved 2002, cato.org). Kuo-Feng Tseng and Barry Litman, “The Impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on the Merger of RBOCs and MSOs: Case Study: The Merger of US West and Continental Cablevision,” The Journal of Media Economics 11 (1998): 47-64. Sylvia M. Chan-Olmstead, “Mergers, Acquisitions, and Convergence: The Strategic Alliances of Broadcasting, Cable Television, and Television Services,” The Journal of Media Economics 11:3 (1998): 33-46.

²⁴Chan-Olmstead, “Mergers, Acquisitions, and Convergence.”

²⁵Hickey, “So Big: The Telecommunications Act.” .

²⁶Chan-Olmstead, “Mergers, Acquisitions, and Convergence.”

²⁷It is not clear if “stations” are actually referring to channels here. The assumption is that digital channels could be split into six analog channels and could simultaneously broadcast six different programs.

²⁸Neil Hickey, “What’s at stake in the Spectrum War?” Columbia Journalism Review (July/August 1996).

²⁹Ibid.

³⁰Howard, “The 1996 Telecommunications Act.”

³¹Howard (ibid) reports that 40 television groups disappeared through mergers and acquisitions, and twenty new groups emerged.

³²Crouteau, and Hoynes, Media/Society: Industrie/

³³Kuo-Feng Tseng, and Barry Litman, “The Impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on the Merger of RBOCs and MSOs: Case Study: The Merger of US West and Continental Cablevision,” The Journal of Media Economics 11:3 (1998): 49.

³⁴Barry Litman and Scott Sochay, “The Emerging Mass Media Environment.” In Information and Communication in Economics, Robert E. Babe, Ed. (New York: Kluwer 1994). Authors cited in text.

³⁵Howard, “The 1996 Telecommunications Act.”

³⁶Kuo-Feng Tseng, and Barry Litman, “The Impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on the Merger of RBOCs and MSOs: Case Study: The Merger of US West and Continental Cablevision,” The Journal of Media Economics 11:3 (1998): 54.

³⁷Collette and Litman, “The Peculiar Economics.”

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹Richard Caves, Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000): 327-28.

⁴⁰Sylvia M. Chan-Olmstead, “Mergers, Acquisitions, and Convergence.”

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴²Caves, Creative Industries.

⁴³Chan-Olmstead, “Mergers, Acquisitions, and Convergence.”

⁴⁴Caves, Creative Industries.

⁴⁵Ibid.

⁴⁶Ibid.

⁴⁷Collette and Litman, “The Peculiar Economics of New Broadcast Network Entry.”

⁴⁸Hickey lists Westinghouse’s takeover of CBS Inc., Time Warner’s merger with Turner Broadcasting, Newscorp’s acquisition of New World Communications Group and Twentieth Century Fox, Tribune Company’s purchase of Renaissance Communications, Gannet’s acquisition of Multimedia Entertainment, the sale of Cap Cities/ABC to Disney and Viacom’s (National Amusements) purchase of Paramount Communication as just a few of the deals made after The Telecommunications Act of 1996. Neil Hickey, “So Big: The Telecommunications Act at Year One.”

⁴⁹In 1994 Time Warner, as a parent company, produced 8 ˝ hours of primetime programming. By 1995 this number rose to 13 hours. Significantly, only 1 ˝ hours of the programming was distributed vertically, the remaining hours were distributed on other networks (Collette and Litman, “The Peculiar Economics of New Broadcast Network Entry”).

⁵⁰Bielby and Bielby, “’All Hits Are Flukes.’”

⁵¹This is not to imply that the companies are friendly. In 2000 Time Warner blacked out Disney’s ABC to 11 Southern California cities. Disney had wanted to raise their rates for access to ESPN, thus increasing cable customers’ fee for cable, something Time Warner did not approve of. Time Warner was, “…refusing to meet Disney’s terms for carrying three Disney channels…on its cable systems in exchange for the right to air ABC,” (Hofmeister, 2000). Sallie Hofmeister, “Cable TV Dispute Cuts Off ABC For Millions of Viewers,” The Los Angeles Times 2 May 2000.

⁵²See Hickey for examples of companies like AOL/time Warner’s Time publishing a cover on Pokemon as The movie Pokemon was being released. Rupert Murdoch has also wielded his power to advertise his pay television channel on the front page of his hometown newspaper, the Adelaide Advertiser. Further, financial columnist, Terry McCrann for Murdoch’s Daily Times Mirror of Sydney, Australia, suggested to readers that buying stock in News Corporation Inc., Murdoch’s parent company, was sound financial advice (Baker 1998). Neil Hickey, “Coping with Mega-Mergers,” Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 2000). Russ Baker, “Murdoch’s Mean Machine,” The Columbia Journalism Review (May/June 1998).

⁵³Bielby and Bielby, “’All Hits Are Flukes’”; William T. Bielby, “Controlling Primetime: Organizational Concentration and Network Television Programming Strategies,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 47 (December 2003):573- 596.

⁵⁴Charles Lewis, “Media Money: How Corporate Spending Blocked Political Ad Reform & Other Stories of Influence.” Columbia Journalism Review (September/October 2000).

⁵⁵Ibid: 1.

⁵⁶Noam and Freeman, “The Media Monopoly and Other Myths.”

⁵⁷Georg O. Ramstad, “A Model for Structural Analysis of the Media Market,” The Journal of Media Economics 10:3 (1997): 45-50.

⁵⁸Ibid..

⁵⁹Noam and Freeman, “The Media Monopoly and Other Myths.”

⁶⁰Ibid.

⁶¹When the authors do break the media market into industries they are most likely are referring to the SIC (standard industrial classification) codes that are used by sales professionals, job hunters, advertisers, economists, marketing researchers, and for computer-assisted searches. Communications (radio, telephone, television, cable, telegraph and other communications, and communications services) and motion pictures (film and video production, services allied to motion pictures, film and tape distribution and distribution services, theaters, and video rentals) are two industrial classifications (and their sub-classifications) that can guide any classification in a scientific analysis of the available data.

⁶²Ibid.

⁶³The classic media sector refers to the entertainment industry. Ibid.

⁶⁴Ibid, 22.

⁶⁵Tseng & Litman (“The Impact of the Telecommunications Act”) observe that, “The Telecommunication Act of 1996 is radically changing the market structures of the traditional electronic media and telecommunications industries. It deregulates the barriers to entry between both the cable and telephone industries and allows them to enter each other’s service areas.” As larger telephone companies merged with cable operators it may have resulted in higher level of concentration, but a decline in the top four firms’ shares.

⁶⁶Ibid; McChesney, “The New Global Media”; Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly.

⁶⁷Ibid.

⁶⁸Ibid.

⁶⁹Ibid.

⁷⁰Bagdikian presents a narrower definition of media in The Media Monopoly, 223.

⁷¹Robert Entman, Democracy without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press 1989).

⁷²William A. Gamson, David Crouteau, William Hoynes, and Theodore Sasson, “Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality,” Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 373-93.

⁷³Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1993):30.

⁷⁴McChesney, “The New Global Media:”; Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly; Parenti, Inventing Reality.

⁷⁵Ibid.

⁷⁶Since 1999 the trend for companies such as Sprint, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple to make deals with companies such as Disney and Viacom (National Amusements) may further affect a geography of the production/distribution of programs. It would be interesting, for further research, to employ network analysis to research the blurring between the telecom and Hollywood industries. There have also been mergers since 1999 in the industries studied in this paper. Again, further studies will augment this analysis.

⁷⁷Stephen P. Borgatti, Martin G. Everett, and Linton C. Freeman, UCINET 5.0 Version 1.00 (Natick: Analytic Technologies, 1999).

⁷⁸Tim Brooks and Earl Marsh., The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (New York: Ballentine Books, 1999).

⁷⁹Ibid.

⁸⁰bibnet.com.

⁸¹Million Dollar Directory, Dun & Bradstreet Inc. (New York, 1989, 1994, 1999).

⁸²Directory of Corporate Affiliations National Register Publishing Company (Skokie, Illinois 1989, 1994, 1999).

⁸³It could be noted here that the possible shortcomings of the data may be that BibNet and the economic directories did not allow for more subtle ownership, such as the percentage of shares of public companies held by external sources.

⁸⁴Each year did not necessarily have the same number of volumes as later years. For instance, The Directory of Corporate Affiliates in 1989 has only one volume that includes international companies, a master index and companies’ holdings. Also, earlier editions did not specify thresholds. Directory of Corporate Affiliations, National Register Publishing Company (Skokie, Illinois 1989, 1994, 1999).

⁸⁵The Million Dollar Directories list domestic companies only. Million Dollar Directory, Dun & Bradstreet Inc. (New York: New York 1989, 1994, 1999).

⁸⁶For a complete list of the omitted programs please contact me. It is possible that there is also a pattern in which programs were not found in BibNet. This could affect the study because a number of programs without a production company listed could be produced by the same company. This company would then be missing from the study.

⁸⁷Each hierarchical cluster analysis is several pages in length with little or no differences in the clusters after the first page, thus, for the sake of space please contact me for the entire output.

⁸⁸Again there are many pages of the output from the in/outdegree procedure. Please contact me if you would like a copy.

⁸⁹Recall that in 1989, companies could not produce and distribute their own programming on their own networks/channels. Thus, companies showing both indegrees and outdegrees reflect either news programming that is produced in the networks own newsrooms or programs that were produced but perhaps distributed elsewhere

⁹⁰Those companies that can not be seen can be said to be so similar, or structurally equivalent, to the others that they are not listed because they can not be viewed)

⁹¹Newscorp’s website (newscorp.com) reports that News America Publishing Group formed in 1997. I am not certain if this is the same company that was renamed as a “group” but perhaps bought by Newscorp between 1989 and 1994. This might be the case as Newscorp occupies almost the exact same position in 1994 as News America Publishing did in 1989.

⁹²According to Viacom’s website (viacom.com) National amusements acquired control of Viacom in 1987. Later, in 1993 National Amusements acquired millions of shares of Viacom’s class A and B common stock. The amount of stock National Amusements owned may have been the deciding factor in it being listed by 1994 as Viacom’s parent company.

⁹³According to the website for Universal Music (www.umusic.com) Universal merged with MCA as far back as 1962, though this was not reflected in the reference material I used. Also, in 1991 Matshushita bought MCA.

⁹⁴caslon.com.

⁹⁵paramount.com.

⁹⁶It appears this is actually two rings, but I wanted to try and pick thresholds that could include as many companies as possible, a difficult task when there is so much variation between rings.

⁹⁷caslon.com.

⁹⁸newscorp.com. In 2001 Chris Craft officially merges with Newscorp, offering more syndication outlets for Newscorp.

⁹⁹This may not be surprising considering Sony’s other ties to the media industry in interactive games, music, and equipment.