Provided To You By: Lyle Opolentisima
There's a good chance that you're consuming material from one of six corporations when you turn on the TV, stream a movie, or turn on the radio. The organizations that own these media behemoths, like Comcast, Disney, and Time Warner, have a lot to say about what you watch, read, and hear. They don't have branding on the screen or advertisements in the program notes, yet their influence is frequently undetectable. This is how they use their influence to affect everything from sports broadcasting rights to your favorite comedies and more.
Comcast
You may be asking yourself, "Wait a second, Comcast owns NBC? I don't recall doing it. The reason for this is that it was only made public in January of last year.
National Amusements (NAI), the parent company of Viacom and CBS, is owned by Comcast to the tune of 22%. As part of this agreement, the two businesses combined to form "ViacomCBS" after receiving regulatory approval.
Now that you know a little bit more about the situation, you can see why Comcast is so eager to acquire 21st Century Fox: if the deal goes through, they'll get all of the Fox assets—including Fox News Channel and Fox Sports 1—for nothing!
Disney is incredibly powerful. It owns ESPN and other cable channels, in addition to the ABC broadcast network and its affiliates. Additionally, it runs the film production companies, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. In addition to these more conventional media properties, Disney has a wide range of affiliates that work in a variety of entertainment-related fields, such as animation, interactive media development, and game publishing for consoles like the Xbox One and Playstation 4, theme parks located all over the world, cruise ships, toy manufacturing, music labels, retail stores, films produced for streaming services like Netflix (and even those on YouTube), live stage productions, and more.
News Corp. is a multi-national media firm with operations in book publishing, newspapers, news and information services, and digital education. Rupert Murdoch launched the business in 1979.
A division of News Corp., Fox Entertainment Group runs the entertainment channel FOX, which airs hit shows like "The Simpsons" and "Empire." Additional channels owned by it include FX, National Geographic, and AMC Networks (AMC).
Warner Time
A media conglomerate is called Time Warner. Along with Warner Bros., which is the owner of DC Comics and numerous other assets, they also control HBO and CNN. In addition, Time Warner offers a wide variety of cable TV channels, including Cartoon Network and TNT, as well as Time publications, the New York Post, TMZ.com, games (the firm was formerly a division of Atari), and much more.
Sony/ATV Records
The licensing for Michael Jackson's song library is handled by Sony/ATV Music Publishing. The master recordings are owned by his estate, and Sony/ATV is in charge of publishing his tunes.
Michael Jackson still earns millions from his music every year, despite it not being as lucrative as it once was because of disagreements between his estate and his heirs.
The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Tupac Shakur's top-grossing songs are among those published by Sony/ATV, one of the four major independent music publishers who collectively own over 70% of the best hits lists in the world.
National Attractions
Sumner Redstone, the oldest billionaire in the world at 95 years old, is the owner of National Amusements. 97% of CBS and 100% of Viacom's voting shares are under his control.
The corporation also holds control over Paramount Pictures, which it acquired in 2006 when it bought a 50% interest and then the entire firm two years later. Since then, it has been claimed that Redstone was seeking to sell off the majority of his Paramount holdings as part of a deal to regain control of Viacom under Shari Redstone's management.
The media environment is evolving. Who controls it all matters more than just the media we watch and listen to. Although major media conglomerates like Comcast, Fox, and Disney are on the rise, there are also new opportunities for independent creators to connect with audiences on websites like YouTube or Facebook. The choice of what kind of world we want our children (and ourselves) to grow up in is ultimately up to us, the watchers.
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