Ownership Patterns

Ownership patterns are the trends and patterns in ownership of diverse mass media. It shows us the different ways in which the media is owned.


The content of comercial television is mainly owned by ITV plc, but access to digital television, satellite  and cable in Britain is controlled by both News corp (Rupert Murdoch) and Virgin Media (Richard Branson). Virgin media is one of the prime examples of media corporations that weren't content with just one field in media and branched out. Virgin started out as a music label and record store chain but has now expanded to produce services such as cola, vodka, insurance, banking, travel, cinema, digital television and wedding dresses.

Branson is the founder of Virgin but only owns a minor percentage of of the 400 plus companies under it's name. But even that is enough as he is a millionaire and Branson himself is said to be worth around 3 Billion pounds. Some of the larger firms that he owns such as, Virgin  Money, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Trains and Virgin Media have other major shareholders and aren't solely owned by Branson. Some of the brands are simply licenced to a company that has purchased a subsidiary (part ownership but still controlled by the holding company) from him. Like Virgin Mobile USA and Australia. Virgin Radio and Virgin Music (now part of EMI). In return, as the licence holder of the Virgin brand, Branson receives annual or triennial fees that could add up to hundreds of millions each year.

These kinds of diverse media companies will often group together their products like when films and games are advertised in the same way and get released at the same time. Disney do it a lot with advertising their films using their other owned forms of media. As disney now own a chat room and gaming site called 'club penguin' they use this site to advertise their latest releases. For example; close to when Monsters University came out they made a Monsters University themed party and mini game on the site where children could learn the names of the characters and later want to pay to see the film.

Horizontal and Vertical Integration is a simple way of categorising whether you expand your company across the different boundaries of media or whether you expand your company's current field of media.

Horizontal Integration (or cross media ownership) is when a large company crosses media boundaries and invests in a range of products and media fields. It will often converge with another large company to strengthen its assets. For example; when Disney purchased Pixar for $7.4 Billion and turned a profit of $3.2 Billion over the period of 6 films. Under this agreement 2.3 Disney shares were given for each Pixar share. Once their contract ended Disney were very sad to see Pixar go "We welcome and embrace Pixar's unique culture, which for two decades has fostered some of the most innovative and successful films in history." - Robert Iger (Disney Chief Executive)

Vertical Integration is when a company focuses on increasing their control of all aspects of their production like their suppliers and their distributors to maximize their profit, reduce their transaction costs and secure supply and distribution channels. For example, when Harry Potter 7 was due to release it was done so through Time Warner. Time Warner owns Warner Bros. pictures who created the film, HBO and CNN who marketed the film, and Warner Bros. international cinemas chain who distributed the film.

Public Service Broadcasting
The Concept of Public service broadcasting began in the twentieth centaury. A small number of selected major and recognised broadcasters would be tasked to provide educating, informative and entertaining features to broadcast to the public in order to retain their licences. However more modern day programming doesn't need to do public service broadcasting as nowadays the internet contains the majority of what people want and need in terms of interactive media offerings.

The BBC is one of the major organisations that have used digital media platforms, for example their website BBC.co.uk, to expand the concept of public service material across media mediums. The internet has also enabled the British Library to become an online information database as well as a physical information site. It is believed public service is moving more and more in the online direction because of today's youth and how they are more connected with their laptops than their television.