Essay #2 - Jeff Jacobson - British Media Ownership: Has America Taken Over?

A worldwide trend of media convergence and consolidation has been occurring for several years now. Many of these companies are US-based. As foreign governments de-regulate their broadcast media, American companies have carried their consolidation efforts overseas, as the American market has become very developed and no longer has room to expand (McChesney, 2001, ¶5). As part of my ongoing investigation into what impact American television and broadcasting are having on British television, this week I want to look at how American companies have made ownership inroads in the UK market. The surprising result is that they?ve hardly arrived at all.
As stated in the previous paragraph, media corporations are consolidating. This raises concerns about the quality of information received when it is coming from just a few sources (Wresch, 1996, 8). As the Labour Government began discussing its proposals for broad media reforms in 2002, this became a concern, particularly in a provision that changed rules regarding ownership of newspapers and television. Previous rules prohibited anyone who owned more than 20% of the UK newspaper market from owning a terrestrial Television channel as well (Media ownership, 2002, ¶30). A clause in the reform bill removed that restriction from the UK?s Channel 5. This bill seemed targeted squarely at Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation, who owned 32% of the newspaper market (Media ownership, ¶29). Some even suggested that the provision might become known as the ?Murdoch Clause? (Media ownership, ¶35). Another controversial reform opened UK television ownership to non-EU companies, prompting fears that British TV would be ?flooded? with low-quality American imports (Doyle & Vick, 2005, 84). Now that the reforms have been implemented, have these predictions come to pass?
Somewhat surprisingly, neither of these really have. In fact, according to The Media Owners project, as of May 24, 2007, News International (News Corp) currently does not own an over-the-air station, as many detractors of the bill had feared would happen (http://www.londonfreelance.org/rates/owners/_ni.html). In fact, the same project (http://www.londonfreelance.org/owners/index.html) reports that of the major American corporations in broadcast television, only Disney has any television broadcasting interests in the UK, with a 25% stake in Good Morning Television. GE and Time-Warner currently have no broadcast interests whatsoever in the UK. There may be several reasons for this, according to Gillian Doyle and Douglas W. Vick (2005). They suggest that ?prevailing exchange rates, high UK company valuations and the early stage of US economic recovery? are important factors in the lack of US investment in UK broadcasters (84). And as I discovered last week, the UK has not become a ?dumping ground? (Doyle & Vick, 84) of low-quality American programming. If anything, the US has been a dumping ground of low-quality British programming.
Thus, it seems that so far an Americanization of British television broadcasting ownership has not really happened. However, this may be a situation unique to the UK, and may not reflect conditions in other recently liberalized economies. Further, changing market conditions could at some point in the future attract US companies to the British market. While the UK has thus far avoided this, the future is still up in the air.

References
Doyle, G. & Vick, D. W. (2005). The Communications Act 2003: A new regulatory framework in the UK. Convergence, 11(3), 75?95.
McChesney, Robert W. (2001). ?Global media, Neoliberalism, and Imperialism.? Monthly Review, 52. Retrieved May 30, 2007, from: http://www.monthlyreview.org/301rwm.htm
Media ownership laws to be relaxed. (2002, May 8). BBC. Retrieved May 31, 2007, from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1972519.stm
Wresch, William (1996). Information rich, information poor. In W. Wresch, Disconnected: Haves and Have-Nots in the Information Age. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Posted at 01:14PM Jun 01, 2007 by Jeff Jacobson in General  |  Comments[1]