Question: Which companies in your industry are most global? What has been the key to their success in other countries?
Summary: Five major "Global Media Giants" exist in our media industry as of today. Those five giants are "Time Warner (1997 sales: $24 billion), Disney ($22 billion), Bertelsmann ($15 billion), Viacom ($13 billion), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation ($11 billion)." The two golden rules those companies have followed in order to achieve success are the following:
1) "Get bigger so you dominate markets and your competition can't buy you out. "
2) "Have interests in numerous media industries, such as film production, book publishing, music, TV channels and networks, retail stores, amusement parks, magazines, newspapers and the like...firms that do not have conglomerated media holdings simply cannot compete in this market. "
Analysis: At a first glance those two rules might seem simple enough to follow, but the key queiostions are - how do you "get bigger"? And how can you obtain and keep "conglomerated media holdings" afloat? There are answers to those questions - of course there are - but not a single one out of tose five companies is going to "spill the beans" and reveal all of its secrets.
What I found interesting, however, was that all of these companies started becoming what we now call "media giants"around the same time (1990s) - Time Warner (1992), Disney (1995), Bertelsmann (1994), Viacom (1994), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (1995).
That made me wonder whether it's even possible for the other, newer, companies to reach that same level those five giants have reached, or possibly even overthrow them sometime in the near future...
That made me wonder whether it's even possible for the other, newer, companies to reach that same level those five giants have reached, or possibly even overthrow them sometime in the near future...
I think that it is nearly impossible for new companies to take over the market shares of these ones. They were founded during the time when the modern media industry was forming and succeeded in dominating the market. However, the media industry is extremely fluid - new innovations are constantly changing the way people choose to access information and entertainment and new companies do have the potential to steal away new approaches to media before the giants catch on, as in the case with Netflix. I do think, however, that this is a very challenging task seeing as these companies already have strong consumer and resource bases.
ReplyDeleteThere are instances where new companies would be able to carve their own share out of the market- when the technological and industrial landscape changes too drastically for the currently existing conglomerates to react to. However, usually this process takes long enough that while a couple of companies may be able to join the big league and a few companies might fall, most of the existing giants will be able to adjust themselves with plenty of time.
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