Ownership and Regulation

Power and media industries- Curran and Seaton
A political economy approach to the media:
- ownership
-control
The most significant factors in how the media operate.

Capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer hands. Narrows the range of opinions. Profits come first at the expense of creativity.
The internet does not offer a level playing field for diverse voices to be heard. Constrained by nationalism and state censorship.
News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, oligarchy

The Guardian, owned by Scott Trust Limited
The Daily Telegraph, owned by The Barclays' brothers Press Holdings
The Daily Mail, owned by Lord Rorthermere's Daily Mail and General Trust plc
The Sun, owned by News Corp-orated- chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch
The Sunday Times, owned by New Corporation- Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch
The Daily Telegraph, owned by The Barclays brothers press holdings
The Observer, owned by Scott Trust Limited 
The Daily Star, owned by Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell
The Sunday Express, owned by Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell
The Times, owned by News Corporation- Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch

Companies who own these newspapers, own more than one, as shown above. The companies who own more than one are linked, in the titles, for example; The Daily telegraph, The Daily Star and the Daily Mail are all owned by the same company (The Barclay's Brothers Press Holdings). Meaning that the same ideologies will be spread across all the newspapers with the same owners.

Curran and Seaton stated that ownership and control are the two most significant factors in how the media operates, they said that the capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership being in fewer hands, this narrows the range of opinion which is a future risk that will continue to increase as ownership will narrow even more as the same biased opinion will be in every type of  media and therefore the audience will not be given an option to believe anything else.

Cultural Industries – Hesmondhalgh

Cultural industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration –
cultural production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates who vertically integrate across a 
range of media to reduce risk.
Risk is particularly high in the cultural industries because of the difficulty in predicting success, high 
production costs, low reproduction costs and the fact that media products are ‘public goods’ – they are not destroyed on consumption but can be further reproduced.

This means that the cultural industries rely on ‘big hits’ to cover the costs of failure. Hence industries rely on repetition through use of stars, genres, franchises, repeatable narratives and so on to sell formats to audiences, then industries and governments try to impose scarcity, especially through copyright laws.
The internet has created new powerful IT corporations, and has not transformed cultural production in a liberating and empowering way – digital technology has sped up work, commercialised leisure time, and increased surveillance by government and companies




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