Friday, February 23, 2007

The biggest, the best, better (?) than the rest

Who should be afraid of the big bad wolf? Just about anyone, I guess. Analyst firm ZenithOptimedia (what a name! :P) just released a report on the biggest media owners on the planet. Not surprisingly, most are from the US, with Time Warner heading the list (a measly 29 billion $ in revenues). Leading the chase are News Corporation (16,7$ bln), General Electric (who are the parent company of NBC Universal) (14,6$bln), CBS Corporation (13,3$ bln) and Walt Disney Company (13,2$ bln). Google are on the list in a 13th place, Yahoo has squeezed into a 15th place.

Now, these wolves are big, but are they bad? Not per say, but more by default, methinks. See, with all this money floating around, and with the inate hunger of commercial companies to expand and devour (and not necessarily in that order) more and more take-overs will be accomplished in the coming years. The nightmare would be the crisp autumn day in 2019 when Time Warner NBC finally merges with NewsCorpDisneyCBS to form the ONLY media company on Earth. By jove, it will become boring pretty quickly.

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