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This chapter examines the media sector in Cologne and its neighbouring municipalities. It argues that the growth of the media industry in Cologne is due to the large number of collective competition goods in the area. However, this availability is a secondary consequence of a set of political decisions, with the Cologne-based broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk as the starting point for the cluster.

This chapter focuses on rock 'n' roll films in the U.S. during the mid-1950s. The story lines of these films, often starring and largely made for teenagers, revolved around the music industry with a heavy weighting of musical performances in clubs and television studios, particularly toward the films' denouements. It attempts to explain the reasons behind the popularity of these films and analyzes the film cycle amid in the context of contemporary practices of labor, exploitation, consumer citizenship and decentralization. It also discusses the decentralization and diversification of the media industries and the question of teenage leisure expenditure.

This chapter focuses on combination of film and music that does not work. It aims to establish that there is a set of rules in place that arbitrates against and reprimands certain meetings of film and music that is firmly located in particular traditions of production and consumption. It explains that the bonds between film and music are often wrought with such precision that the extrication of any element would amount to an eerie in-completeness for many a viewer/listener. It also evaluates the impact of the so-called post-industrialism on the organization of labor in the media industries.

This chapter examines the potential of media distribution, and the balance of structure and agency enacted in different approaches to it, to inform our view of a wide array of major social and scholarly concerns. In particular, it considers the key role played by the technologies and practices of media distribution in the conditions under which people congregate and imagine their communities. It first explores the impact of distribution on the conditions of media work in the media industries, paying attention to media ownership models and their effect on media distribution strategies. It then discusses the ability of online distribution networks to spur social change by cutting across social and regional boundaries and helping to reconfigure them; how distribution renders societal groups and subcultures visible; how states impinge on distribution as a form of political oppression; and how distribution platforms can promote public participation. It also analyzes the implications of distribution platforms for political activism as well as for film and literary culture.

There are few industries whose ownership and control are more important than those of media, given their central role in social, cultural, economic, and political life. The preceding chapters have analyzed these industries. This chapter summarizes and interprets the findings across the world, and provides answers to the series of questions, from A to Z, posed in the introductory chapter. These questions include: how large is the media sector? What are the largest media markets? Is content really king? What are the levels of media concentration globally? Are the world’s media becoming more concentrated? Have American media become more concentrated? Does the transition to Internet-based media reduce concentration? What countries have particularly high media concentration? Where is there a high pluralism of voices? What are the factors for high national media concentration? What countries have particularly high cross-media ownership? What countries are high importers and exporters of media? Do American media dominate world media? How does media concentration differ for emerging countries from that of richer countries? What are the trends of convergence among countries and among industries? What are the world’s most dominant media companies? What companies dominate the attention for news? Who are the largest media owners? What are the priority problems? And lastly, what might policy remedies look like?

This book is about media rights and intellectual property. It discusses law and how it shapes certain aspects of the media industry and examines aspects of media practice that are heavily dependent on the protection, exchange and enforcement of certain legal rights that broadly come under the heading of intellectual property. It analyses the connection between cultural creativity and economics and how politics, power and the philosophy of property rights influence and shape the structure of the global media economy. It also considers how new media technologies are presenting immense challenges to age-old regimes of copyright and trademarks and how the contemporary media industry is coping with such dramatic change. Part One explores theoretical issues in media rights, focusing on the rudiments of intellectual property law and how they relate to the media industry. Part Two presents case studies in media rights, with chapters on music and copyright, broadcasting rights to sport, independent television producers and media rights, celebrity and image rights, and intellectual property and the Internet.

This chapter criticizes the film and music combination in the motion picture Harum Scarum which starred Elvis Presley. It mentions critics' opinion that this is the worst movie in which Presley ever starred. It discusses the plot of the film and attempts to locate the film's icon within the paradigms of labor history. It suggests that there is a strong but underresearched connection between the public treatment of media industry synergies that run aground and much broader anxieties about how we have earned our livings over the past fifty or so years.

This chapter discusses the lack of ethnic diversity in the creative sector, which remains a significant problem throughout the media and creative industries. There is a significant under-representation of people from black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME) working in the media and creative industries. Despite many years of efforts by individuals and organisations designed to improve ethnic diversity in the industry, UK media is missing out on an enormous pool of talent. Some of the reasons why access to the creative industries for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds is poor include lack of awareness among BAME young of the opportunities available; closed recruitment networks within the media; and limited knowledge on the part of school and college career services of the opportunities available in the creative sector.

This chapter examines media ownership and concentration in the United States. Following an overview of the American media landscape, the remainder of the chapter focuses on print media (newspapers, book publishing, magazine publishing), audiovisual media (radio, broadcast television, multichannel TV platforms, cable and satellite TV, film), telecommunications media (wireline and wireless telecom), and Internet media (Internet Service Providers, search engines, online news market). By weighted average, print media are the least concentrated sector, though they have slightly consolidated over three decades. Average concentration of the audiovisual media industries is higher and growing, but it did not breach the threshold for a moderate level. Cable TV has risen considerably in concentration, with Comcast dominant. Telecom media concentration is high and trending up since the 1980s when the AT&T monopoly was broken up; even higher and faster rising are online media. The main platform companies are AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, Softbank, and Deutsche Telekom. In print media, the main firms are Bertelsmann/Pearson, Gannett, Time Inc., Dow Jones (Murdoch Group), Advance, Tribune, and Hearst, and McGraw-Hill. In the audiovisual field, major firms are the Murdoch group, the Redstone group, Disney, Comcast, Sony, and Time Warner.

This chapter discusses the concentration of the 13 media industries that the countries surveyed. National data for an industry are measured against the other of the 30 countries. The chapter also compares the major regions of the world by averaging the countries for six regions: North America, Latin America, the emerging BRICS countries, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Also compared are the average per capita spendings on the various media among countries, along with the share of a particular medium in overall national consumption.

Although altering an original film may infringe the moral rights of the creator — as has happened with the colorisation of some black-and-white films from the 1940s and 1950s — in some cases the reuse of content in new ways might actually invigorate interest in the original films, making them more commercially desirable. In the age of the Internet and the wizardry of digital media, the potential for innovation and media creativity is arguably more expansive than any period in our cultural history. The open source movement and the concept of free software have shown a way in which ‘free culture’ or ‘free media’ can exist. The Creative Commons, launched in 2001, enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others. Before discussing the new possibilities afforded by digital media and the development of open and progressive media rights initiatives, this chapter examines why the media industry's obsession with copyright infringement and piracy is potentially damaging to our media culture.

This book explores the notions of remaking and remodeling the magazine by focusing on how women's magazines are evolving from objects into brands in the digital age, along with its implications for both producers and consumers of content. It considers how “traditional” media industries are transforming in a digital era of media, and more specifically, how producers are confronting vexing questions about the identity of the women's magazine. The book highlights three identity constructions: organizational identity, professional identity, and gender identity. It also discusses the implications for how, when, and where media producers work; how the cross-platform and interactive logics of production challenge the traditional categories of readers and audiences; and what is at stake for the content that gets distributed in various media forms. It shows that, in light of the boundary shifts associated with media convergence, magazine producers are ostensibly compelled to (re)define their industries, their roles, their audiences, and their products. The goal of this book is to initiate debates about the shape-shifting nature of creative labor.

This chapter presents the world’s top media companies in 13 industries across 30 countries. The industries are measured by revenue, as well as by a measure called the power index. Following that, the world’s largest media firms are determined on the basis of revenues, market shares, and power index. The result show that platform media are by far the largest, and among them the largest, by the power index, are the companies owned by the Government of China, as well NTT, AT&T, Telefonica, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, Grupo Carso, Vodafone, and Orange. Among content media, the top companies are, by power index, the Government of China, Google, the Murdoch group, Comcast, Globo, BBC, and Disney.

This book places the culture of media franchising in terms of a “creative license” and a dynamic of “collaboration” in order to explore both the subjective experiences of collaborative creativity within media franchising and the licensing relationships and other hierarchical industrial structures shaping it. Through franchising, the media industries exert a cultural license to shape creative practice. While critiques of franchising like those of The Onion or College Humor often prove quite funny, media franchising is no joke as it has proven to be both an economically significant and culturally meaningful way of life in the media industries. Its significance and complexity as a production logic derives from providing creative resources to a wide range of social actors.

This book explores the connections between Hollywood and Bombay cinema from 1913 to 2013. Drawing on the humanities and social sciences, it analyzes the contact between American and Bombay cinema by highlighting India and the United States as both real and imagined stages of encounter. By focusing on how “Hollywood” and “Bombay cinema” have been produced in the history of encounter, the book reveals the ways that media industries are created, conceptualized, and sustained over time. It also examines the multiple dimensions of the relationship between Hollywood and Bombay cinema, and especially how American cinema and the Indian film industry have come into contact.

This chapter begins the section on countries in Asia and the Pacific. It examines media ownership and concentration in Australia. Following an overview of the Australian media landscape, the remainder of the chapter focuses on print media (newspapers, book publishing, magazine publishing), audiovisual media (radio, broadcast television, multichannel TV platforms, film), telecommunications media (wireline and wireless telecom), and Internet media (Internet Service Providers, search engines). Australian media ownership has been dominated by media families such as the Murdochs and the Packers. The mixture of concentrated ownership and powerful personalities means that media policy has been a contentious issue. In telecom, too, there have been contentious battles over policy between the government and the major network operator Telstra.

This chapter describes media ownership and concentration in China. After examining Chinese media landscape, the bulk of the chapter looks at print media (newspapers, book publishing, magazine publishing), audiovisual media (radio, broadcast television, film), telecommunications media (wireline and wireless telecom), and Internet media (Internet Service Providers, search engines, online news market). Chinese mass media industries have very high concentration indices due to the strong ownership role of the government and its sub-divisions. Provincial governments also own media outlets. Even more concentrated are the platform media industries of wireline and wireless telecom. Here, the main state-owned companies are China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. Private ownership is more prevalent in new media, examples being Baidu, Sina.com, and Sohu.com.