Viacom (VIAB)
Viacom was formed in 1971 by CBS Inc. to make popular TV system. After the Federal Communications Commission prohibited television networks from doing that. In 1976 it established the Showtime movie network, and in 1985 it bought the MTV networks, including the music video channels MTV and VH-1 and the Nickolodeon. In 1987 Viacom became owned inferior to the National Amusements Inc. movie theater chain. It continued to expand, acquiring more radio and television stations, adding cable channels and franchises, and producing films for Showtime and several popular television series for the networks. In 1994 Viacom got Paramount Communications Inc., a media conglomerate that had been founded in 1958 as Gulf + Western Corporation.
Netflix utilizes a number of different advertising methods. Netflix created a coupon in the form of an enlarged movie ticket offering a free month of service. These “movie tickets” are given out at cash registers at all Best Buy stores and are included in packing boxes of most of the major DVD player manufacturers (Sony, Philips, Toshiba, Panasonic, RCA, etc.). Best Buy’s website also has a link directly to Netflix which is under the “DVD rental service” drop down menu. Each DVD mailer sleeve from Netflix includes a tear off “tell a friend” certificate with a promotion code that provides the bearer with a free month of service. At one time, Netflix sold banner ads on their websites. However, they abandoned this strategy after three months because the revenue stream was not sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining the ads. Netflix also has an aggressive affiliate program. The affiliate program encourages other websites to provide links to Netflix and offers a referral fee for linked new members at a range of $9-$12 per member. This fee is dependent upon the number of referrals provided in a month. If a site is successful at delivering greater than 200 new customers in a month, the referral fee is negotiable, up to $30 per new customer. Netflix is a straightforward company. It rents DVDs via the Internet and sends them to you through the U.S. Postal Service. For a flat fee of $19.95 a month, you can build a list of movies at the Netflix.com Web site that you want sent to your home. The company sends you the first three along with prepaid return envelopes. When you're ready to send them back, you put them in the return envelopes and drop them into any mailbox. The minute the return is processed, the next one, two, or three DVDs are on their way. Depending on where you live, the turnaround time is two to five days.
Music Television, a basic cable service known by its acronym MTV, remains the dominant music video outlet utilizing effective marketing and competitive business practices throughout its nineteen year history. The creation of the "I Want My MTV" marketing campaign and use of the campaign throughout the 1980's helped the cable outlet secure a substantial subscriber base. MTV dealt with competition from cable mogul Ted Turner's Cable Music Channel by creating a fighting brand, sister cable service VH-1, along with facing challenges by numerous other music video programming services. Through exclusivity agreements with record labels for music videos and limiting access to cable systems owned by MTV's parent company, MTV exercised anticompetitive and monopolistic means to fend off competition. From its launch, MTV successfully applied these marketing and competitive business practices. The board of the Warner - AMEX Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC), a partnership between Warner Communications and American Express, gave approval in mid-January 1981 for the creation of a cable service that would broadcast music videos . Music videos, song length visual depictions used in the promotion of a musical act's latest release, were already popular on European television since the mid 1970s. A deadline of August 1, 1981 was set for the launch of this new cable service as programs featuring music videos were beginning to appear on cable outlets such as Home Box Office and USA Network. The set-up and programming of the entire operation was to be established in approximately six-and-a-half months.
Cox Enterprises ,Inc. is the parent company for Cox Communications, Inc., Cox Interactive Media, Inc., Cox Newspapers, Inc., Cox Radio, Inc., Cox Television, and Manheim Auctions, Inc . Since James Kennedy became the CEO for Cox Enterprises in 1988, revenues have increased from $1.8 billion to more than $7.8 billion in 2000 . The public trading of both Cox Communications and Cox Radio since the company takeover by Kennedy has resulted in a respectable market capitalization of $27 billion and $2.4 billion.
Walt Disney began in 1923 with a short film called Alice’s Wonderland. It was co-owned by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney. Disney moved forward into the future with very popular filmed entertainment such as Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi and so many more until the death of Walt Disney in 1966. Walt Disney was then successfully supervised by Walt’s older brother, Roy Disney, until his death in 1971 after the completion of his brother’s dream, Walt Disney World. It was in 1983 that Disney expanded its operations to include the Disney Channel and the Touchstone Pictures film label. When the new president and CEO, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, came onto the scene they set out to maximize the company’s assets by opening its famous movies up to the TV syndication market and video cassettes. With the classics easily accessible and available at a lower cost the company grew to greater heights. The success continued in 1988 when Disney movies hit new box office heights bringing in more than $100 million. Then between the years of 1989 to 1994 chart toppers like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King launched the entertainment company to even greater heights. The films were grossing between $200 and $783 million...
ABC Family was launched in 1977 by a televangelist named Pat Robertson’s as a Christian Broadcasting Network(CBN) focused mostly on religious programming, until 1981 when it was changed to CBN Cable Network and instead began to include a mix of recent and classic family oriented films and series while also keeping few religious programs. At this time ABC Family already reached one million homes. It was not until 7 years later in 1988 that the word “family” was actually included in the channel’s name and became known as The CBN Family Channel. Soon the network gained significant popularity and profit thus it was spun off to a new company, International Family Entertainment Inc., to keep CBN’s non profit status safe. By 1990 it was called the Family Channel. Then in 1998 it was renamed to Fox Family Channel, until 2001 when Disney bought and rebranded ABC Family. In 2006, a new slogan was developed under ABC Family: A New Kind of Family It became the American basic cable and satellite television channel owned by a division of Disney-ABC Television part of Walt Disney Company, that we know today as simply “ABC Family”.
Polycom was founded in December of 1990 and went public in 1996. Its global workforce is comprised of approximately 3200 employees. Revenues for 2010 were posted at $1.2 billion. Polycom prides itself in being
Disney was first formed in 1923 when founders Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, created an animated short called Alice Comedies (“The Walt Disney Studios – History, n.d.). Years later in 1937, Disney established a large following from the production of their first ever full-length animated movie, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (“The Walt Disney Studios – History, n.d.). The large revenues that flowed in from this production allowed Walt Disney to grow his business into the multimillion-dollar company that it is today.
Byte Products, Inc., headquartered in the midwestern United States, is regarded as one of the largest volume supplier for the production of electronic components used in personal computers. Byte Products, Inc., was a privately owned firm that has now entered to be a publicly traded company. The majority of the stockholders are the initial owners of Byte, when it was still privately owned. The products that Byte produces are primarily found in computers used for business and engineering applications. Byte Products, Inc., has been the leader in this industry for the past six year with consistent yearly revenues of 12% and total sales of approximately $265 million. Byte also has 32% of the market share.
In 1965, when the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc. merged to create PepsiCo, their revenue was $510 million. Today, it stands at more
Yahoo! Inc. is a global Internet communications, commerce, and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 120 million users each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the World Wide Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household, and business user reach, and is one of the most recognized brands associated with the Internet. The company also provides online business services designed to enhance Yahoo!'s clients' Web services, including audio and video streaming, store hosting and management, and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 21 World properties. Yahoo! has offices in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Canada and the United States, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
Tyco Incorporated w as founded in 1960 by Arthur J . Rosenberg, situated in Waltham, Massachusetts. In 1982, to strengthen the company, Tyco w ere divided into three business segments which are fire protection, electronics and packaging. Tyco reorganize ed the company again in the 1990s which included electrical and electronic components, health-care and specialty products, fire and security services, and flow control. By 2000 Tyco I nc., had acquired more than three major companies such as ADT, the CI T Group, and Raychem.
Diverse business and industrial houses that originally had interests limited in oil and financial services only, had now started investing more into the media industries. These industries primarily had private ownership. In the late 1980s a new form of cooperation emerged whereby there was cross –promotion and cross-selling between the different corporations so that there would an increase in the overall sales. With the developments in technologies new sources of cultural production emerged making the ownership more complex. In many of these industries such as radio, television and films, there was the emergence of oligopolistic ownership emerging which was leading to the creation of huge conglomerates. (pg195) In the USA, for instance, large corporations such as the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) became one of the leading companies overtaking the various media forms like publishing and newspaper companies and Hollywood studies emerged as an oligopoly which was integrated vertically. This vertical integration led to the development of certain new technologies such as recording and playback. There was also cross media ownership which made the system very complex. Film studios like MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) also held considerable interest in music industry. In the 1980s media houses began to invest more into consumer electronics companies. For instance,
Media ownership matters because the media is a powerful tool that can be used to influence a whole society. When the media is in the hands of five companies, it becomes dangerous because they essentially control what we see in television, in the newspaper, on the streets, etc. Right now, the media is dominated by five companies: Time Warner, Walt Disney Company, Viacom, News Corporation, and Bertelsmann AG. These five conglomerates own various companies in different industries. Media conglomerates are companies that companies in various forms of mass media. For example, Walt Disney Company owns Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Records, five stations on ESPN Radio, Disney on Ice, Marvel Entertainment, ABC Television Network, ABC News, ABC Sports, Disney Channel, ESPN, ABC Family, Disneyland resorts in multiple countries, and much more. Time Warner owns Warner Bros. Pictures, the CW Television Network, HBO,
Jimirro idea is to create cable television channel that broadcast Disney Studio films, but Walt Disney Company rejected Jimirro’s idea because the company was busy developing Epcot theme park (“The Disney Channel,” n.d.). However, few years later Walt Disney Company reviewed Jimirro proposal and it start a partnership Group W satellite in 1982, and it broadcast the premium channel in 1983 (“The Disney Channel,” n.d.). Disney Channel started as a pay service and its first program was Good Morning, Mickey, which is series of animated cartoon, launched in April, 1983 (“The Disney Channel,” n.d.). Disney Channel became rapidly popular among American audiences, indeed there were more than half million Americans subscribed to Disney Channel by September of 1983, the number of audience increased to five million by 1990 (“A Salute to Disney Channel,” n.d.). In addition, Walt Disney expanded Disney Channel broadcasting from 16 hours per day in 1983 to 24 hours per day in December 1986, due to Disney Channel popularity (“A Salute to Disney Channel,”
The American motion picture studio was formed in 1912 by Carl Laemmle who was a film exhibitor, and producer. The studio started off creating low budget films, until it was purchased by the Music Corporation of America, which formed it into the most profitable and largest company for films and television in the world.