Media Ownership

Introduction

For this assignment I will be choosing 2 media conglomerates and researching all about the company and its structure and ownership.

Time Warner

Time Warner is one of the world’s largest media companies, located at the Time Warner centre in New York City. Time Warner used to be two separate companies known as, Warner communications Inc and Time Inc. After merging together they now make the current Time Warner that operates in film, television and publishing.

In 1972 Kinney National Company went into the entertainment industry and renamed itself Warner Communications Inc. During the 1970’s and 80’s it ran the two companies: Warner bros. pictures and Warner music group.

In 1976 Warner Communications purchased Atari for around $2-12 million. At the time period of 1976 to 1984 where it owned Atari it produced up to a third of Warner’s annual income.

On March 4^th 1989 the merge of Time Inc and Warner Communications was announced which eventually completed the following year.

In the year 2000 AOL purchased Time Warner for $164 billion. This created the company AOL Time Warner. Who later de merged after a period of great loss when the company reportedly lost $99 billion in 2002 – the biggest loss ever reported by a company at the timeThe total value of AOL stock subsequently went from $226 billion to about $20 billion.

Time Warner’s subsidiary companies include New line cinema, Time inc, HBO, Turner Broadcasting system, The CW television network, TheWB.com, Warner Bros, Kids WB, Cartoon network, Boomerang, Adult swim, CNN, DC comic, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon network studios and Castle rock entertainment.

Time Warner is a huge company nowadays with around 32,000 Employees broadcasting to a worldwide audience with a

The problem with media conglomerates owning lots of companies in many areas of the media especially in news is that all of what we are being shown comes from the same group of people and they will put their opinion forward as opposed to others.

The fact that Time Warner owns so many companies can be seen as a good and a bad thing. It is good in the respect that lots of companies can now be trusted, under control of a well established company. However as they own broadcasters such as CNN and radio stations, a lot of what they show us could be based on what a few specific people believe and the truth could be bended to fit what they want us to think. http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/  <- a website to show how TV companies can bend the truth.

XFM

XFM is a mix of two radio stations that play mainly indie pop. The radio station is owned by global radio.

XFM was created in London, 1992 by a man called Sammy Jacob when it expanded to four stations. XFM now only has two main services: XFM London which has been broadcasting in the London area officially since 1997 and unofficially since 1992, and XFM Manchester which was launched on the 15^th march 2006. XFM is now available across most of the country over DAB radio. XFM has, in the past employed various DJ’s that have gone on to become even bigger celebrities. These include: Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, Simon Pegg, Christian O'Connell, Russell Brand, Justin Lee Collins, Adam and Joe, Zane Lowe and Dermot O'Leary.

On the 11^th February 2008 GCap Media decided they were going to sell the analogue licenses for the Manchester Scotland and South Wales stations, leaving only the London station. However, although the sale of the South Wales station preceded the sale of the Scotland and Manchester stations stopped when Global Radio started to purchase Gcap.

XFM became the first station ever to release and bands album completely free from the website. The album was ‘You cross my path’ by The Charltons