Power & Media Industries (James Curran & Jean Seaton)

Power & Media Industries

Industry & Audience 

Curran and Seaton on the need of diversity:

"Diversity is in the public interest - but modern societies suffer from collective attention deficit disorders [...] the public interest has to work harder to be noticed, and we need agile but resourceful media to do that," - Seaton & Curran.

Monopoly - The exclusive ownership or control of something.

Example of monopoly:

- Disney

- Stagecoach (Cambridge)

What a monopoly does is take away the opportunity of decision making.

Owners of UK newspapers:

Richard Desmond - owns four separate newspapers (Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday) Net worth - 2.12 billion. 

Conglomerate - A large cooperation made up of many other smaller companies 

Subsidiary - A smaller company owned by a large cooperation 

Benefits of conglomeration is that audience is taken from the smaller companies and and bands together with the diverse audience between each company. 

Curran and Seaton on monopoly - 

"It (extends) their range of business and political connections, (increases) their corporation's prestige and, through judicious editorial appointments, [contributes] to the maintenance of public opinion favourable to private enterprise," 

It's all about the money.

One issue with conglomerates is that if it removes the idea of an independent companies. It allows Newscorp to review their own films in a positive light while they slag off the competitor's.