Even readers aware of the trend toward corporate concentration will be struck by the consolidation of media power over the last decade. In 1983 Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly found the media market dominated by about 50 large firms. As McChesney notes, Bagdikian's 1997 update identified just 10 firms with comparable power. Media sectors that were once relatively open and competitive have, with government help, dramatically consolidated. In 1985, 12 firms controlled 25% of all movie theaters, by 1998 they controlled 61%. Some 80% of book retailing is now controlled by a few national chains, as the share of sales by independent book dealers fell from 42% to 20% in the mid-'90s. Today six firms control 80% of the nation's cable TV hook ups. Even "alternative weekly newspapers," once seen as local outlets of independent thought, are now dominated by a few national chains.
Along with concentrated ownership has come conglomeration, the "process whereby media firms began to have major holdings in two or more distinct sectors." Disney, Sony, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Time-Warner, Viacom, and Seagram are the "first tier" of media conglomerates. These media empires now stretch across every aspect of media production and distribution.
For example in 1988, Disney was a $2.9 billion "amusement park and cartoon company." In the '90s it grew nearly 10 times as large, and now owns the ABC TV and radio networks, part or all of over 10 cable stations (including ESPN, A&E, and Lifetime) and three major film studios. It has major holdings in book publishing, the travel and resort business, music recording, and 660 retail outlets. It also owns two professional sports teams, plus TV production and Internet companies. Numerous other assets today make Disney a $25 billion company.
McChesney traces these trends internationally and finds a global media system that is "fundamentally noncompetitive," dominated by about 10 transnational corporations. The system plays a central role in the development of what he calls "'neoliberal' democracy; that is a political system based on the formal right to vote, but in which political and economic power is resolutely maintained in the hands of the wealthy few."
The "hallmark" of this global system "is its relentless, ubiquitous commercialism." U.S.-style TV shopping networks now span the globe. Disney and McDonald's have a 10-year agreement to promote each other's products in 109 countries. Music, sports, and children's programming strategies are increasingly global, with Viacom's Nickelodeon thriving in Latin America and Time-Warner's Looney Tunes now a $4 billion, multilingual, worldwide money machine.