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ABCG4103 Global Communication
ABCG4103 Global Communication
ABCG4103 Global Communication
ABCG4103
Global Communication
INTRODUCTION
ABCG4103 Global Communication is one of the courses offered by the Faculty of
Applied and Social Sciences at Open University Malaysia (OUM). This is a three
credits course and should be covered over 8 to 15 weeks.
COURSE AUDIENCE
This course is offered to all students taking the Bachelor of Communication
programme. This module aims to impart the fundamentals of global
communication and the main players in communication media landscape. This
module should be able to provide a strong knowledge base and critical thinking
in the dynamics of the global communication scene.
As an open and distance learner, you should be able to learn independently and
optimise the learning modes and environment available to you. Before you begin
this course, please ensure that you have the right course materials, understand
the course requirements, as well as know how the course is conducted.
STUDY SCHEDULE
It is a standard OUM practice that learners accumulate 40 study hours for every
credit hour. As such, for a three-credit hour course, you are expected to spend
120 study hours. Table 1 gives an estimation of how the 120 study hours could be
accumulated.
Online Participation 12
Revision 15
COURSE OUTCOMES
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
1. Provide knowledge and understanding of complex global communication;
2. Explain the implications of changes to the worldwide media landscape;
3. Explain the impact of global media expansion on the communication
industry and less-developed nations;
4. Discuss the issues that arise from emergence of global broadcasting, global
advertising and global journalism; and
5. Identify media conglomerates that control the global media system.
COURSE SYNOPSIS
This course is divided into 10 topics. The synopsis for each topic can be listed as
follows:
Topic 1 introduces the main aspects in global communication. The topic focuses
more on the developments of globalisation and its implications on global
communication. Therefore, some related model and theory will be discussed in
this topic in order to increase the understanding of the global communication
landscape.
Topic 2 discusses the major US media conglomerates that dominate global media
and global media-related markets. Some of the selected global media are Time
Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, General Electric, Dow Jones &
Company, Gannet Company and Walmart.
Topic 3 discusses the role of non-US stakeholders in world culture and creative
economy. European countries, Bollywood domination in the Indian film
industry, and other non-Western groups of multimedia corporation will be
examined in terms of their operations and their influence on the cultural industry
of the world.
Topic 6 discusses the role of main news agencies at the international level.
Among them are Reuters, AP, UPI, AFP, Bloomberg and Xinhua that are
recognised as worldwide news sources or providers.
Topic 7 focuses on the development of Arab media in the Middle East and North
Africa and track the changes from traditional and heavily controlled entities to
one that is currently undergoing rapid modernisation. It also covers the history
of this new openness, heralding a new beginning for the media in the region.
Topic 8 examines the major global advertising agencies and their development at
the international level. This topic discusses the history and activities of Omnicom
Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Companies, Dentsu Inc and the
Publicis Group.
Topic 10 focuses on the Internet and its usage as one of the communication media
in information and communication technology era. This topic discusses the
history of this new media and its communication method as well as its impact on
the media and communication industry.
Learning Outcomes: This section refers to what you should achieve after you
have completely covered a topic. As you go through each topic, you should
frequently refer to these learning outcomes. By doing this, you can continuously
gauge your understanding of the topic.
Summary: You will find this component at the end of each topic. This component
helps you to recap the whole topic. By going through the summary, you should
be able to gauge your knowledge retention level. Should you find points in the
summary that you do not fully understand, it would be a good idea for you to
revisit the details in the module.
Key Terms: This component can be found at the end of each topic. You should go
through this component to remind yourself of important terms or jargon used
throughout the module. Should you find terms here that you are not able to
explain, you should look for the terms in the module.
section), at the end of every topic or at the back of the module. You are
encouraged to read or refer to the suggested sources to obtain the additional
information needed and to enhance your overall understanding of the course.
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
No prerequisite is required for this course.
ASSESSMENT METHOD
Please refer to myINSPIRE.
REFERENCES
Albarran, A. B. (2002). Media economics: Understanding markets, industries and
concepts (2nd ed.). Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Paterson, C., & Sreberny, A. (2004). International news in the 21st century. John
Libbey Pub.
INTRODUCTION
Any discussion on the state of international mass communication would
eventually settle upon the key developments of globalisation and its implications
on global communication. As students of global communication, you need to
understand the way in which media is affected by globalisation and
internationalisation, its impact on society as witnessed in excessive consumption
and materialism, extremism, intolerance and ultra-nationalism.
In the field of international media studies, the ideas really point to a powerful
economic tie which promote the flow of cultural products and information and
communication technology that can indoctrinate and impose values in foreign
cultural image. Thus, it is possible that a one-way flow would ultimately create a
homogeneity which takes on the form and image of the dominant producer of
ideology and technology.
Polemics on the debate about the flood of information and media content from
diverse sources into national communities remains a contested issue. There has
always been concern about the one-way flow from the rich media of the North to
the poor media of the South, especially to communities that are geographically
isolated. There is a fear that some communities in Myanmar, Afghanistan and
other remote areas of the globe would be on the receiving end of endless flow of
foreign content that would diminish the importance of their own indigenous
cultural forms and content. Instead of being enriched by their own cultural
values, these remote societies are on the receiving end of foreign cultural content.
The sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world
system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and
sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even to
promote, the values and structures of the dominant centre of the system.
(Schiller, 1976)
Thus, world media industries can affect social, political and cultural institutions
and members of society should determine the cumulative effects of the media
and observe and study such effects in order to limit the ramifications and not to
be complacent of its impact. The assumption in some quarters is that the impact
of the media on the cultural domain is perhaps more worrisome than for
example, the economic sector, the education, science and even military sector.
Tehranian (1999) also presented the view that the impact of global
communication on the international cultural life is the most pervasive and
visible. He presented several examples of the international media impacting his
journey along the Silk Road in 1992. Madonna and Michael Jackson were
portrayed in broadcasts throughout the journey, passing through cities like
Almaty in Kazakhstan, Dushanbe in Tajikistan, Tashkent in Uzbekistan and
Teheran in Iran. Other international entertainers and media personalities
included O. J. Simpson trying to escape arrest, and preacher Jimmy Swaggart
talking in the Kazakh language.
A typical day in the life of a Malaysian viewer would be a diet of some local
programmes plus a huge selection of American programmes, Korean k-pop and
melodrama, Indonesian sinetron and other products from satellite television
programmes from Bollywood, Mollywood, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.
Media in the developing world is critical of such domination due to the
justifiable fear of citizens being too exposed to foreign values and images,
especially ethnocentric occidental values such as an over presentation of political,
economic and other foreign values that project the superiority of the West rather
than projecting universal values.
The flow of news is still dominated by the super agencies of the West, namely,
Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Agencia Ife. Other
providers of video services and satellite television news are also dominated by
Visnews, Cable News Network, World International Network and Sky TV. These
agencies perpetuate an ethnocentric agenda and promote a sense of superiority
through large volumes of events in the First World which are not equally
balanced by coverage of news from the Third World.
ACTIVITY 1.1
The second era beginning in the 19th century, saw cultural and artistic pieces
being sold and kept in the personal collections of buyers. It marked the beginning
of creative symbols being managed as market products. Works of art began to be
sold by publishers and booksellers and middlepersons, indicating business
activity and accumulation of business dealings and profits. There was a sharing
of profits through the payment of royalties to the originators of artistic products.
Some examples of developed nations looking for better markets and lower
operating costs elsewhere are as follows:
A majority of the international news agencies are located in the West. The Big Five
in Europe include Reuters and The Associated Press in United Kingdom, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) in France, Deutsche-Presse-Agentur in Germany and
AgenciaEfe in Spain. A monopoly by these agencies has created a situation of
dependency which has led to inequality between countries in the North and
countries in the South. News flow from the West is not balanced with the flow
from the developing world resulting in large volumes of information about the
West, eclipsing the number of reports from the developing world.
During the Cold War, it became obvious that the flow of information was a
highly contested area in global affairs. Both sides, namely, the American and the
Soviets, fought to ideologically capture the hearts and minds of the world. The
West was fearful of the Soviet agenda and became concerned about controlling
economic, cultural and political influence.
To counter the exploitative nature of the Western media, critics and leaders from
the Third World began a movement known as the New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO). The group was led by Tunisian Information
Minister, Mustapha Masmoudi. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Communication Organisation (UNESCO) actively organised conferences and
debates on the flow of news and information and global communication.
Therefore, UNESCO was the front runner of the movement and became directly
involved with NWICO. MasmoudiÊs group tabled a list of issues to be discussed
and passed, which included the following (Masmoudi, 1979):
(b) The information rich dictated terms to the information poor, thus creating a
structure of dependency with widespread economic, political and social
ramifications for poor societies;
(c) This vertical flow (as opposed to a desirable horizontal flow of global
information) was dominated by Western-based transnational corporations;
(e) The entire information and communication order was a part of, and in turn
propped up, international inequality that created and sustained mechanisms
of neo-colonialism.
There were other scholars who supported MasmoudiÊs view that the imbalances
were grossly unfair to developing countries, creating a de facto hegemony and a
will to dominate. Operating through the Non-Aligned Movement, the NWICO
held a number of meetings, mainly in Algiers in 1973 and Tunis in 1976. Finally
in 1978, UNESCO adopted the 1978 Mass Media Declaration during the General
Conference of UNESCO expressing support for the principles of self-reliant
communications and self-determination for countries in establishing the role of
the mass media in development.
(c) Removal of the internal and external obstacles to a free flow and wider and
better balanced dissemination of information and ideas;
(g) Respect for each cultural identity and for the rights of each nation to inform
the world about its interests, its aspirations and its social and cultural
values;
(h) Respect for the right of all people to participate in international exchange of
information on the basis of equality, justice and mutual benefit; and
(i) Respect for the right of the public, of ethnic and social groups and of
individuals to have access to information sources and to participate actively
in the communication process.
The United States led strong opposition to the proposal and hinted at the
presence of the Soviet Union amongst the group of Third World countries
pushing the issue as part of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union.
Claiming that the MacBride Report was against the spirit of free and liberal
media of the Western world, the opponents of NWICO also charged that it was a
ruse by Third Word leaders and dictators to impose stringent controls on the
media and to inhibit the presence of foreign journalists in their countries.
The report was finally submitted to the 31st General Conference Session of
UNESCO held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1980. The Belgrade conference passed
the resolution of NWICO. However, in 1983, the Reagan government in
Washington withdrew its USD50 million financial support for UNESCO. Since
USA was the biggest financial contributor, its withdrawal was a major setback for
UNESCO. President Reagan had initiated a new phase in the Cold War and
Washington remained steadfast in its opposition to any move taken to give
control of the mass media to Southern governments. Therefore, citing opposition
to the MacBride Commission, the US withdrew from UNESCO in 1985. The
Thatcher government of Britain, a Reagan ally, followed in 1986, confirming the
ideological shift of the Reagan-Thatcher era of right-wing governments in the
1980s.
Every society has a right to preserve public peace and order, and therefore has
a good right to prohibit the propagations which have a dangerous tendency.
These legacies may be traced back over decades and centuries and were
developed according to Western philosophies based on their historical, political
and cultural environments. The legacy philosophies were followed by two
contemporary philosophies in order to meet new demands of evolving societies
from outside the Western moulds. The contemporary philosophies added to
describe todayÊs mass media are the Developmental and Democratic Participant
theories. McQuail (1983) referred to these as the normative theories of media
purposes which are also related to the way the state manages the transmission of
information, comment and expression.
ACTIVITY 1.2
The four theories mentioned earlier are also referred to as the Legacy
Philosophies of the press such as the following:
(a) Authoritarian
(b) Libertarian
(c) Communist
(d) Social Responsibility
(a) All mass communication tools should be harnessed to assist the role;
(f) Individual and civic freedom should remain at lower priority than issues of
illiteracy; and
The governments that subscribe to this system are reminded that this philosophy
should be guided by two other emphases. The first is that the media serve as a
watchdog which monitors the activities of governments in building major
infrastructures such as roads, bridges, health care and supplies of basic
amenities. The main goal should be the well-being of the citizens. This also
means that government policies and the media should promote schooling in
remote areas, population planning and birth control. The second emphasis is that
the media should promote cultural autonomy which is really important for
countries that are open to flows of foreign media products. The media should
ensure that local content can be easily accessed by the indigenous population.
Central to the study of media economics is the notion that media industries
promote and contribute towards the economic growth and development of
countries. There is a vast body of research that shows that a free media promotes
growth. The same idea also proposes that a media system that is free of
government control also contributes in the long-term towards political stability
which then propels further economic growth. In this growth model there is an
equation model which proposes that media freedom promotes socio-political
stability which contributes towards a better climate of investment.
Cunningham, Banks and Potts (2008), in their paper for the WIPO Conference of
2007, reminded participants about how the culture and creativity industry may
be looked upon as supporters of economic growth and development. They also
stated that the cultural industries may be analysed in the context of four models
of culture and the economy. They are the welfare model, competitive model,
innovation model and growth model. The economic growth model is directly
applicable to the discussion on the growth of the creative industries, the major
contributor to the overall growth of the economy now.
In Asia, Europe and America, the creative industries are positively looked upon
as the growth driver due to the ability of the industry to contribute to new
creation of wealth and value. The creative industry is associated with the rise of
the global market economy. For example, beginning from the 1990s, Korea
became an exporter of media products to Asia and reaching as far as Europe and
America (see Tables 1.1 and 1.2).
Table 1.1: Creative Goods: Exports, by Economic Group, 2002 and 2008 (in millions of $)
Table 1.2: Creative Goods: Imports, by Economic Group, 2002 and 2008 (in millions of $)
ACTIVITY 1.3
ACTIVITY 1.4
The current tradition of scholarship in the media looks at the patterns of media
effects and media content, especially impact studies on various audiences. One
example is the application of the Lasswell model to study the media impact of
radio, television and newspapers. Figure 1.1 provides a visual presentation of the
various evaluation methods in dealing with audiences.
Figure 1.2 depicts the Lasswell model in analysing the communication process.
These types of research rely heavily on the quantitative approaches which need
to be empirically tested and validated.
Media economics research is reflective of growing media industries all over the
world and looks into the application of economic theories and uses such
conceptual frameworks to analyse key production, marketing and market
performance. If we track this particular development we can see that early
studies looked into microeconomic concepts such as structure of ownership,
concentration and competition of the newspaper industries, radio and the
television industries. Albarran (2002) too noted that media research has again
focused on the macroeconomics of the industry, thus research topics such as
economic growth, employment, aggregate production, consumerism, inflation
and political economy remained popular research areas.
Of course, the topic of globalisation is also a challenge for media researchers. The
competition for the global marketplace means that researchers would be looking
into international television programming, sales and rentals of film and music
downloads. The presence of transglobal businesses means that researchers need
to look into global financial data and audience share in the domestic and global
marketplace. Therefore, global media economics is set to remain an important
section in the study of global communication. It is crucial to keep abreast of
economic issues in the media industries so that its contribution to society is
monitored and assessed.
McPhail was associated with the Canadian media scholar McLuhan. It was while
he was attached with UNESCO that McPhail was commissioned by Sage to write
about electronic colonialism, specifically on the impact of the deluge of Western
images on the non-Western world. The title was cognisant of the earlier
colonialist tendencies of the Western world to colonise foreign lands and exploit
the raw resources for the sake of the empire. Except that now, the West is after
new marketplaces and new consumers for their electronic products, which are
now packaged nicely into high quality digital form.
The peripheral countries are forced to sell products at very cheap rates but in
return they have to buy back manufactured products from the core countries at
relatively higher prices. Thus, there is an element of exploitation because rich
resources flow from the peripheries to the core without the subsequent balance in
economic growth.
In the current classification, the core zone nations would include United States of
America, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Japan. The peripheral
zones are countries such as a large part of the African continent, Latin America
and a large part of Asia. The semi-peripherals would be represented by countries
such as Austria, Brazil, China, Finland, Sweden, South Korea, Singapore, India,
Argentina, Mexico and Egypt.
Therefore as a summation, the world system talks about the concept of core
countries versus peripheral nations, the age old notion of weak and powerful
nations. The technological advancement and manufacturing of sophisticated and
complex products of the core West and the peripherals of the poor and
developing South with the raw resources, agricultural produce and cheap labour.
McPhailÊs electronic colonialism also looks into the abject state of the countries
caught in the perennial trap of the vicious cycle of trade and information
imbalances that continues unchecked. The two theories are remarkable in sharing
the paradigm of media dependency of developing countries and highlighting the
reliance of a one flow information system and global news in the Western
perspective.
The major players are jostling for top positions to be in control of production,
dissemination and influence over the global marketplace. Economic returns,
ideological and political dominance remain the core objectives of
international corporate powers.
Cunningham, S., Banks, J., & Potts, J. (2008). In Anheir, H., and Isar, R., (eds).
Cultural economy. London: Sage.
Hachten, W. A. (1992). The world news prism. Ames: Iowa State University
Press.
McKenzie, R. (2006). Comparing media from around the world. Boston: Pearson
Education, Inc.
Nye, Joseph, S., Jr., & Owens, W. A. (1996). AmericaÊs information edge. Foreign
Affairs, March/April, 20–36.
Siebert, F. S., Peterson, T., & Schramm, W. (1956). Four theories of the press.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton &
Co.
UNESCO. (1980). Many voices, one world: Communication society today and
tomorrow. Paris: UNESCO.
INTRODUCTION
The production of media products from the United States, especially audio and
visual products such as films, television shows and music, seem to dominate the
media industry around the globe. The US has one of the oldest film industries in
the world and also the largest in terms of generating revenue. Hollywood, the
first movie studio in the global film industry, was founded in 1911.
The US film and music industry led the world with 20,620 companies generating
USD95.4 billion in revenue in 2010. The US has the largest number of
multinational corporations comprising television, newspaper, cable and magazine
businesses.
In this topic, you will be introduced to the major US media companies that have
an impact on global media markets. These American media giants have
expanded through regional partnerships, international joint ventures and outright
takeovers.
ACTIVITY 2.1
2.1 OVERVIEW
Many American corporations are operated globally. Even though other major
global corporations seem to compete with the US such as Sony (Japan) and
Bertelsmann (Germany), US firms still control a majority of foreign sales in the
global communication market. US exports of entertainment media attained
shares in international markets in excess of 90% due to the high global interest of
their products. The sector enjoyed a trade surplus of USD11.9 billion in 2009
(selecusa.commerce.gov).
The global media leaders (McPhail, 2011) listed below are multimedia corporations
in terms of revenue and assets:
(a) Time Warner (US);
(b) Disney (US);
(c) News Corporation (US);
(d) Viacom + CBS (US);
(e) General Electric-NBC Universal (US);
(f) Sony (Japan);
(g) Berterlsmann (Germany);
(h) VNU (Netherlands);
(i) Vivendi (France); and
(j) Discovery Communications.
Many of these are US-owned with extensive market activities. These multimedia
conglomerates strategically reposition themselves as global corporations in their
expansion to movie theatres, cable systems, satellite distribution system, music and
video outlets.
Some critics see the global economic activities as new colonialism or electronic
colonialism because along with their expansion, the media conglomerates bring
with them American values, history, culture and language to the world, hence
impacting upon other countriesÊ domestic media and world view.
ACTIVITY 2.2
2.2.1 History
Time Warner was first known as Warner Brothers in 1923. In 1972, it became
known as Warner Communications Inc. In 1975, it cooperated with American
Express, bringing along with it MTV, Nickelodeon and the Movie Channel. In
1985, the group was sold to Viacom.
In 1989, it merged with Time Inc, forming Time Warner. In October 1996, Ted
Turner acquired it through his Turner Broadcasting System, forming the second
largest cable television network.
Time Warner was purchased by AOL in January 2000 for USD164 billion and
became known as AOL Time Warner. The merger turned out to be a fiscal mess
and the stock took a big drop. The company deleted the „AOL‰ from its name in
2003 to improve the image of its core assets, and AOL became a separate
independent company on 9 December, 2009. Time Warner then established a
ACTIVITY 2.3
The merger of AOL and Time Warner did not work out as hoped. With
your coursemates, discuss why the merger failed.
2.2.2 Businesses
The Time Warner Annual Report 2011 classified its business into three segments,
namely, networks, film entertainment and publishing.
(a) Networks
The network business primarily consists of a brand-aligned website and
owned by Turner Broadcasting System or Turner Networks. It is operated
by Home Box Office (HBO) and Cinemax.
(c) Publishing
The publishing business is operated by Time Inc. It also operates several
websites and book publishing. By the end of 2011, it had published
21 magazines in print in the US and over 70 magazines outside the US via
IPS media in the UK and Grupo Expansion in Mexico. This firm licenses
over 55 editions of magazines for print publication outside the US to
publishers in 25 countries and licenses digital content to digital and mobile
platform operators in over 50 countries outside the US (b2bcdn.timeinc.com).
Time Inc also publishes its magazine content in various digital devices and
platforms. As of December 31, 2011, all of Time IncÊs US magazines also
provided for tablet editions. Time Inc offers an „All Access‰ model for its
US magazines that provides a print subscription plus cross-platform digital
access to subscribers. On certain digital devices and platforms, Time Inc
offers digital-only subscriptions and single-copy issues to each of its
magazines as well. Time Inc also extended its brands by widening and
initiating free and paid apps that are accessible for download across
different digital devices and platforms, such as InStyle Hairstyle Try-On,
EWÊs Must List, People Celebrity News Tracker, SI Swimsuit and Real
Simple: To-Do List, and mobile versions of SI.com, CNNMoney.com, and
Time.com.
Time IncÊs US magazines and companion websites are organised into four
business units:
(i) Lifestyle – Health, Real Simple, Cooking Light, Southern Living, All
You and Sunset;
(ii) Style and Entertainment – InStlye, People, Essence and Entertainment
Weekly;
(iii) News – Time, Fortune and Money; and
(iv) Sports – Sport Illustrated and Golf.
This arrangement has enabled Time Inc to focus on the potency of these
products and decrease costs by concentrating on central management
products that have a demand in the marketplace.
2.3 DISNEY
The Walt Disney Company or generally known as Disney is one of AmericaÊs
multinational mass media company. It is the largest media conglomerate in the
world (McPhail, 2011) with an annual income of around USD38 billion. The
Disney headquarters is in Walt Disney Studios, California, US.
Known for products from the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group, the companyÊs
objective is „to be the leader in the American animation industry‰
(www.fundinguniverse.com). It is diversified into live-action film production,
television, radio, theatre, publishing, music and online media (www.disney.com).
2.3.1 History
The history of Disney started in 1923 with the setting up of Disney Brothers
Cartoon Studios by Walter Disney and Roy Disney. Walter Disney had the
professional vision of using animated cartoon and feature films as a major
commercial venture while his brother Roy provided the financial acumen to help
build a media giant. The venture produced global icons including widely
recognised characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Cinderella and Snow
White. Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios was later changed to Walt Disney
Productions in 1929.
Walter Disney later built the family-oriented theme park called Disneyland in
July 1955 in South Carolina, US. The theme park attracted almost five million
people and acted as the model for all subsequent theme parks (Krasniewics,
2010). Similar theme parks were later built in California and Florida, and later
expanded internationally with Disneyland in Japan, France and China. With the
successful establishment of Disneyland, Walter Disney was listed by Time
magazine as „one of the twenty innovators who changed the world during the
twentieth century‰ (Mannheim, 2002).
2.3.2 Businesses
The Disney BrothersÊ cartoon creations such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck
have been regarded as popular culture icons and known worldwide by everyone.
Disney has since ventured into new territories such as becoming a hockey team,
the Mighty Ducks, the addition of Disney cable channels and Disney Music.
ACTIVITY 2.4
With assets worth USD55 billion and a market value worth around USD57
billion, the Disney Interactive Media Group was established in 2008 to create
high-quality interactive entertainment across digital media platforms, including
social and console games, blockbuster mobile, online virtual worlds, and the
Moms and Family network of websites and #1-ranked web destinations
Disney.com (www.disney.com).
Currently, the largest Disney unit is its film labels, including Disney, Buena
Vista, Touchstone, Dimension Film, Pixar, Hollywood Pictures, and Miramax
films that make films for selected ABC markets and the global market. Disney
utilises the latest technology and marketing information to raise its annual
market shares. Table 2.1 displays the profitability rates for Walt Disney Co. from
2006 to 2011.
Return on Investment
Return on equity (ROE) 12.86% 10.56% 9.80% 13.70% 15.24% 10.60%
Return on assets (ROA) 6.66% 5.73% 5.24% 7.08% 7.69% 5.62%
2.4 VIACOM
With a total income of about USD 14.9 billion in 2011, Viacom Inc is regarded as
the worldÊs fourth-largest media conglomerate (McPhail, 2011). Viacom, (short
for Video and Audio Communications), is owned by the National Amusement
Inc, which manages over 160 networks that reach more than 600 million people
around the world (www.viacom.com). The companyÊs interests are largely in
programming production and distribution, as well as cable television networks.
The current Viacom was formed on 31 December 2005. This firm is in the
business of motion pictures, television, online and mobile platforms in more than
160 nations and borders through its firms including BET Networks, MTV
Networks, and Paramount Pictures.
2.4.1 History
Viacom was established by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1970 to
meet the requirements by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
excluding television networks from owning cable TV systems or from
syndicating their own programmes in the US. It officially became a separate
company when CBS sold ViacomÊs stocks to its stockholders in 1971
(www.fundinguniverse.com).
In March 2005, Viacom publicised its intentions of splitting itself into two
business companies. A new company, the present Viacom, was built and led by
Freston which encompasses MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount
Pictures Corporation.
2.4.2 Businesses
Viacom eventually became an „entertainment colossus‰ and expanded its
territory through a number of mergers and acquisitions as well as strategic
coalitions and product diversification. Among them was the merger with
Blockbuster in January 1994. Viacom paid the transformation with a cost; the firm
incurred huge debts and the management faced challenges and threats as a result
of the fast-changing media industry.
However, with its capabilities of keeping costs under control, good financial
management and good resources such as syndication rights for some popular
television programmes, product line proliferation, brand name and strategic
alliance, it succeeded in facing the challenge and became an international
stakeholder in major media markets ranging from motion pictures to television,
publishing, recreation and video distribution.
Viacom Inc operation comprises six segments: television, cable networks, radio,
entertainment, outdoor and video. ViacomÊs cable networks include
Nickelodeon, MTV, Nick at Night, Showtime, and VH1, while its television
consists of UPN and CBS television networks, Paramount Television and King
World Productions. Infinity Radio holds and runs a stable of radio stations.
It owns 40% of the STAPLES Center, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers
basketball team and the Los Angeles Kings ice hockey team, 85% of the Fox
Entertainment Group, and major league baseball team the Los Angeles Dodgers
(McPhail, 2011). Nearly 75% of the firmÊs revenues come from its US operations,
while the remaining 25% comes from Europe, Canada, the United Kingdom,
Latin America, Australia, and the Pacific Basin region (www.fundinguniverse.com).
2.5.1 History
News Corp was created by Rupert Murdoch who acquired „The Adelaide News‰
as his first newspaper after his fatherÊs death in 1952. When he returned to
Australia in 1953 after graduating from the University of Oxford, he ran the
paper and began recovering its business.
He then acquired the Sydney Daily Mirror, a New South Wales-based newspaper
chain, Cumberland Newspapers, and Melbourne and BrisbaneÊs Truth. He also
bought a stake in New ZealandÊs largest media company, Wellington Publishing,
in 1964.
Murdoch entered the US marketplace in 1974 by taking the San Antonio Express
News, and then the Village Voice, New York Post, and New York Magazine in
1976. In 1979 Murdoch formed News Corporation as a global holding company.
With News Corp in his business stable, Murdoch also created an international
empire of media, technology and sport franchises.
The firm took over The Sunday Times and The Times in the same year from the
Thomson Group. The 1980s saw News Corp acquiring the South China Morning
Post and Harper & Row publishers (1987), the 20th Century Fox (1985) and
British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) (1989).
However, by 1992, it had amassed huge debts and this forced Murdoch to trade
many of the American magazinesÊ interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.
Much of the back pay came from its stakes in Sky Television satellite network in
the UK which incurred huge losses.
Recognising the US multimedia market as being the most important in the world,
News Corp announced that it would move its corporate headquarters to the USA
in 2004. According to McPhail (2011), the move was to expand the shareholder
base, scope and demand by becoming an American company since more then
75% of its income and profits came from US multimedia operations.
2.5.2 Businesses
With revenue of USD33.4 billion in 2011, News Corp is regarded as a diversified
global media company (see Figure 2.2). Based on the News Corp website
(www.newscorp.com), the firm operates six segments as follows:
20th Fox Television with the CompanyÊs other TV studios, made and
circulated a lot of the worldÊs most popular television programming. The
CompanyÊs TV studios are leaders in animated series and provided many
of the most top series to each of the main US networks.
ACTIVITY 2.5
(c) Television
News CorpÊs television business captured viewers from more preferable
demographics. Its businesses include the 27 stations in the Fox Television
Stations group and various television operations throughout the world
including the Fox Broadcasting Company (the number one network in the
USA); Fox Sports, Fox Sports Australia and MyNetworkTV.
(e) Publishing
It is also engaged in the publishing business, primarily through its
subsidiaries such as HarperCollins Publishers, News International, Dow
Jones and News Limited which owns 146 newspapers in Australia. News
Corp publishing segment encompasses world-leading English newspapers
and their digital brands including New York Post and Wall Street Journal.
(f) Others
Its assets also comprise a large number of the next generation media
properties such as Disney (the leading online video site) and Hulu (a joint
venture with NBC Universal to help people find and enjoy the worldÊs
premium video content when, where and how they want it). Others include
News Outdoor; Making Fun, News America Marketing Group; Fox Library;
IGN Entertainment, Inc; and AmercanIdol.com Wireless Generation.
2.6.1 History
GEÊs history began in 1878 with the establishment of Edison Electric Light
Company by Thomas A. Edison. In 1892, a General Electric Company was born
as a result of the merger between Edison General Electric Company and
Thomson-Houston Electric Company. GE is the only company listed in the Dow
Jones Industrial Index today that was also included in the original index in 1896
(www.fundinguniverse.com).
Since 2001, Jeffrey R. Immelt became GEÊs Chairman and CEO. He was
instrumental in laying the vision for GEÊs many initiatives including digital
connections. Immelt has been nominated three times as one of the „WorldÊs Best
CEOs‰ by Barron's. Table 2.2 highlights GEÊs milestones.
2.6.2 Businesses
GE owns NBC which serves 15 company-owned and operated stations. This
broadly diverse holding consists of NBC television network, NBC-owned and
operated stations, NBC Entertainment, NBC News, NBC Sports, CBNC, MSNBC,
NBC Cable, NBC International, NBC Interactive and MSNBC Desktop Video.
NBC is a part of NBC Universal which was formed in May 2004 by the merger of
GEÊs NBC and VivendiÊs Vivendi Universal Entertainment. GE and US cable TV
operator, Comcast, also announced a buyout agreement for the company on
December 3, 2009. Following regulatory approvals, the transaction was
completed on 28 January 2011. Comcast now owns 51% of NBC Universal while
GE owns 49%. NBC Universal is now known as NBC Universal Media, LLC. It
owns and operates American television networks, numerous cable channels, and
a group of local stations in the United States, as well as motion picture
companies, several television production companies, and branded theme parks.
NBCÊs first major change came when GE acquired RCA (Radio Corporation of
America) and became NBCÊs parent company. In 1993, it launched Canal de
Noticias NBC, a 24-hour Spanish language news services across Latin America
which debuted on cable stations in the US in 1994. CNBC (Consumer News and
Business Channel) was created when two leading media companies, Dow Jones
(which produces crucial world business and financial news and information) and
NBC (the leading television network in the US) came together in December 1997.
Then, NBC agreed to acquire a 32% stake in West Palm Beach, Florida-based
Paxson Communication Corp for $415 million in 1999 that led to the combination
of NBCÊs brand name with the owner of the most number of television stations in
the US. NBC also acquired Bravo, an arts and culture network with over 80
million households across North America.
2.7.1 History
Dow Jones & Company was founded by three reporters, Charles Hendry Dow,
Edward Jones and Charles Bergstesser in 1882. The company was in recent years
publicly traded but privately controlled. Dow Jones was bought in 1902 by
Clarence Barron, the leading financial journalist of the day.
After KilgoreÊs death in 1967, it entered a new era where the news entered into
space and online. Dow Jones initiated the use of satellites to send out newspaper
pages and made possible a daily newspaper on a truly national scale. Before the
invention of the Internet, Dow Jones stored and coded its news digitally so that it
could be accessed online. Its website, Factiva.com, helps the business news and
information seeker to find, monitor, and interpret essential information for
individual or organisational needs. The Journal, Newswires and Dow Jones
Indexes have franchises in Europe and Asia (www.dowjones.com).
The company was acquired by News Corporation and became its subsidiary in
2007 worth USD5 billion. That gave News Corp. control of The Wall Street
Journal and ended the Bancroft familyÊs 105 years of possession. In 2010 the CME
Group announced its purchase of 90% of Dow Jones Indexes for USD60.7 million,
including the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
2.7.2 Businesses
The company is known for its Wall Street Journal which existed since 1889. It is
also known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) that was established in
1896 and today consists of 30 blue-chip US corporations including IBM, Microsoft
and GE.
It started Far Economic Review (1946), The Asian Wall Street Journal (1976), The
Wall Street Journal Europe (1983), and also partnered with Financial Times of
London and the Independent Media. Dow Jones also has a major global alliance
with CNBC by providing it with business and news programmes.
Figure 2.4: Dow Jones & CompanyÊs Print and Digital Media
Source: Dow Jones & Company website
Its leading brands include The Wall Street Journal, Factiva, BarronÊs,
MarketWatch, SmartMoney, Dow Jones Newswires and All Things D (refer to
Figure 2.4). The Dow Jones Local Media Group publishes neighbourhood
newspapers, websites and other products in six US states.
With 53,000 employees and sales revenue of USD6.71 billion in 2003, Gannett also
possess more than 20 television stations covering 17% of the US and 130 websites
in US and 80 in UK. The firm has offices in 43 states, and in countries like Guam,
Belgium, Germany, Italy and Hong Kong.
2.8.1 History
Gannett Co. was created in Rochester, New York in 1923 by Frank Gannett, a
graduate from Cornell University when he bought his partnersÊ interest in The
Empire State Group. Gannett selected Frank Tripp as general manager who
helped operate the daily production while Gannett focussed on the Northeast. In
1947, the company managed 21 newspapers and radio stations.
In 1929, Gannett co-invented the teletypesetter which could be used to send and
receive typed messages from point-to-point and point to multipoint over various
types of communication channels. It also provided a corporate plane that helped
their reporters get to the site of news quickly. Gannett presses were also leaders
in colour use.
The company was relocated to Arlington, Virginia in 1986. In 2001, the company
shifted its operations into the present headquarters in Tysons Corner,
Washington DC.
In 1999, Gannett bought over Newsquest and became one of the U.K.Ês leading
regional community news providers. The digital newspaper was accessed by
7.5 million users each month (www.fundinguniverse.com; www.gannet.com).
Looking at its website, there are other portfolios of 17 daily newspapers and
more than 200 weekly newspapers, magazines and trade publications. Besides
that, Newsquest manages SI, an online publisher which is also a leading
recruitment site in Scotland (www.gannett.com).
2.8.2 Businesses
The company owns 99 newspapers which are among the top 100 by circulation
and 22 television stations reaching 17.4% of US television market.
Gannet also has in its fold 200 non-daily publications in the USA, including USA
WEEKEND, a newspaper magazine. It also publishes Newsquest in the United
Kingdom, coming out with about 300 titles, including 15 daily newspapers (refer
to Figure 2.5). It is obvious that Gannett is an Internet leader and sponsors its
sites in most of its TV stations and newspapers including USATODAY.com,
which has evolved into one of the most popular news sites on the web
(www.gannett.com).
USA TODAY, maintains its leading position in the mobile space, with more than
7 million applications for downloads, including its iPad, iPhone and Android
apps. Gannett Broadcasting is also trying to help in the development of Digital
Mobile TV. USA TODAY – through its newspaper, web site and mobile
platforms – reaches 5.4 million readers daily, which is the top provider in mobile
applications with nearly 11 million downloads on mobile devices.
One of its marketing sectors, PointRoll, is the leader in rich media advertising
solutions and technology, and empowers more than 50% of all rich media
campaigns online and provides about 150 billion ad impressions each year.
Another marketing sector, ShopLocal, links retailers with buyers thus helping
more than 100 of the nationÊs top retailers to link localised promotions directly to
buyers.
2.9 WALMART
Walmart Store, Inc is known as an American multinational retailer corporation
that operates chains of large discount stores and warehouses. According to
Forbes, a leading source for reliable business news and financial information,
Mart is regarded as the worldÊs 18th largest public corporation in terms of
income. With 8,500 stores in 15 countries, it has over two million workers, hence
it is regarded as the largest corporation in the world. However, in terms of
international communication, is a new global stakeholder.
2.9.1 History
The birth of Walmart in 1962 started with Samuel WaltonÊs dream to own his
own store based on serving others, not on financial goals. The dream started in
Newport, Arkansas but his first store failed. He pursued his dream by forming
another store in Bentonville, Arkansas, and become the largest franchisee of Ben
Franklin with the establishment of fifteen discount stores.
2.9.2 Businesses
Walmart has developed from a single store to become the largest international
company. It can be found throughout most of the U.S, Puerto Rico, Mexico,
Indonesia, Canada, Argentina, China and Brazil. With annual sales around
USD165 billion, the company divisions include Walmart Stores US, Walmart
Supercenter, Supermecado de Walmart, Marketside, Walmart Express, and
Walmart International.
In terms of multimedia, Walmart has two sectors, namely retail store sales and
Internet sales, which is the fastest growing media seller. The stores sell DVDs,
CDs, gaming systems and cassettes. In fact, the company sold more DVDs than
any other retailer. It is also the largest retailer of new blockbuster films.
Therefore, the company is HollywoodÊs largest customer with 40% of all DVD
sales (McPhail, 2011).
The companyÊs presence in cyber space happened in 1996 when its website,
Walmart.com, was formed to better serve the customers. On its online business,
Walmart offers three media products:
(a) DVD rentals via mail;
(b) Music downloads at less than a dollar per song from any genre; and
(c) DVD, VHS movies, and other products with an audiovisual connection.
Some musicians are signing exclusive contracts with Walmart such as Garth
Brooks who released an exclusive boxed set, which on the first day sold more
than a half million copies. Other artistes are said to be lining up to be the next
commercial success as a Walmart exclusive.
Mannheim, S. (2002). Walt Disney and the quest for community. Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing.
INTRODUCTION
Almost everyone is familiar with Disney cartoons and Hollywood films. HBO,
Nickelodeon, CNN, MTV and Time magazine have spread all over the world.
These are all American media products and all these have some form of influence
in our daily lives. US exports of entertainment media attain shares in
international markets in excess of 90% because of the high global interest in their
products.
In this topic we will look at the role of non-US stakeholders in world cultural and
creative economy which compete with the American markets. For instance, Sony
from Japan and Bertelsmann from Germany are internationally known for their
entertainment media products and have a worldwide market.
SELF-CHECK 3.1
Discuss the impact that the increase in global media has on:
(a) Media audiences;
(b) Media production; and
(c) Local identity.
Noticing this imbalance in the flow of international trade in the cultural industry,
scholars began to critically study and monitor activities, economic turnover and
impact of such imbalances, especially in the receiving Third World countries. Many
nations are also concerned about the massive flow of American products, typically
films, TV programmes, music, magazines, books, news and information. Naturally
they are alarmed that this over-consumption and exposure would bring about
negative implications for the importing countries and their indigenous culture.
There is a real concern that Western cultural values would overtake the culture of
other countries, a new force of colonialisation, a cultural imperialism, and an
invasion of indigenous local culture by powerful and dominant foreign countries
through mass communication. On an overall basis, critics of the globalisation of
A leading scholar in this research is Herbert Schiller, who was attached to the
University of California (1969-1992) and published his work on the subject in an
important publication entitled Mass Communications and the American Empire
in 1969. Using the neo-Marxist approach, Schiller started to look into the global
power structures in the international media industries and tracked the patterns of
transnational business interests, especially the mega-players. Schiller presented
that some of these media organisations had business links with the major arms
and military producers based in the United States. In another book,
Communication and Cultural Domination, Schiller provided readers and
researchers with his definition of cultural imperialism:
The sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world
system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and
sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even to
promote, the values and structures of the dominant centre of the system.
(Schiller, 1976)
ACTIVITY 3.1
A historian from Burkina Faso, West Africa, Joseph Ki-Zerbo said, „Our
cultures are being reduced little by little to nothing. These technologies
have no passport and no visa, but they are affecting us and shaping us.‰
Imperialism or Globalisation?
Some scholars have chosen to see the spread of international trade in mass media
products as a result of globalisation, not so much a development in imperialistic
intentions. Thus, a counter argument to the culture imperialism theory is that we
can no longer regard the traditional core of Western countries supplying
materials in a one-way-flow. This premise is no longer applicable since the
membership of major producers and exporters has now extended to include
some major exporters from the East such as Japan, China and South Korea.
The previous school of thought believing that the one-way flow of Western mass
media products would impact negatively on local cultures are now claiming that
there is no such thing as uncontaminated tradition (Hesmondhalgh, 2002). They
do not accept that exposure to a dominant culture would inhibit indigenous
traditions; instead the interplay of local and global would strengthen local forms
into becoming „hybrid cultures‰.
Straubhaar and LaRose (2000) too discussed the losing force of the imperialism
theory due to the increasing number of countries becoming media producers and
exporters themselves. In order to succeed as producers, some countries turned to
trade protectionism. For example, France began to introduce national subsidies
for the local film industries while countries such as Brazil and Taiwan chose to
pressure their governments to increase local content and programming.
billion viewers in 200 countries and K-pop programmes dominate the whole of
Southeast Asia. Consider also the fact that Columbia Pictures is owned by Sony,
a Japanese corporate group and 21st Century Fox by Murdoch, an Australian.
ACTIVITY 3.2
In 1949 the first series of the Council of Europe meeting met at the Strasbourg
city hall to discuss the idea of a federated continent. This meeting was attended
by the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sweden,
Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark and Ireland. One of the most eminent figures
present was Winston Churchill, the British wartime leader. He was more
interested to get victors and losers of the war together into a strong unit in order
to check the advancement and expansion of the Soviet Union. At this point in
time Churchill made it very clear that Britain would not be part of Europe
because of the countryÊs ties with the Commonwealth, thus providing another
front to check the Soviet expansion.
The European Union was formally established under its current status with the
signing of the Maastricht Treaty in November 1993. The current geo-political
development of the 27 United States of Europe (USE) member states has
strengthened the idea of a formation of a United Europe. Op-ed pieces in
influential newspapers in Britain claimed that now, more than ever, the United
States of Europe is taking shape (The Independent, June 2012). The USE is now
facing one of its gravest challenges in the form of the on-going Euro crisis in
Greece and now Spain.
Economists and media pundits are claiming that the Eurozone crisis has to be
solved within months only. The irony of the current situation is clear for all to see
because Germany, the country that caused two major European and world wars
in the last 100 years, is now trying to save Europe. Angela Merkel, the German
Chancellor and the leaders of the European Council have managed to handle the
Greek financial crisis and they are now looking into the Spanish request for the
bailout of its banks. Germany is apparently at the forefront in the European
struggle with the economic crisis. Europe is hoping that Germany would solve
the debts of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland which is estimated at a
trillion dollars.
The German Chancellor has since reiterated the European integration stand as
reported by The Independent, June 2012:
We need more Europe. We need not just a currency union, we also need a so-
called fiscal union, more common budget policies. And we need above all a
political union. That means we must step by step, as things go forwards, give
up powers to Europe as well.
After the fall of the Soviet era, the USA pushed across a policy to retain their
domination as a super power in exporting both „hard and soft power‰ (Nye,
1996) across the world. US dominance in mass media proved to be of concern all
over the globe. The American dominance was assisted by the development of
media technologies making media equipment and products cheaper and more
mobile, allowing for a proliferation of such products both inside and outside
national borders.
In the listing, major players are represented by companies in the United States,
three European companies from Germany, France and Britain and one each from
Japan and Canada. The largest corporate bodies in Europe are Bertelsmann and
the Kirch Group from Germany, Hachette and Havas from France, and Reed
Elsevier, EMI and Reuters from Britain.
The government of Britain too pursued the privatisation plan although it did not
privatise BBC and Channel 4. Media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, an ally of the
then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, tried to change the broadcasting
scene. Murdoch, through the British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) was able to gain
control over TV technologies and by mid-1990s News Corporation had
monopoly over UK pay-TV.
In the music industry, three European companies are in the top six of the
recording industry of the world, as seen in Table 3.1. The big three in Europe are
Netherlands, Germany and United Kingdom while two are from Japan and one
from United States.
European companies are also driven by the need to remain in control of the
European marketplace and to keep managing media houses with profit margins.
There is always the concern for maintaining the diversity of content and to
reduce dependence on transnational corporations. The Europeans are aware also
of the importance of maintaining European traditional links in the public.
The Council of Europe are mindful of the effect of the powerful transnational
media content and have recommended several actions to protect media
pluralism. Some of the actions are as follows:
(b) Member States of the Council of Europe should support public service
broadcasters, as specific providers of diverse content.
(d) Member States should strengthen their action to secure media pluralism
and the editorial independence of the media through legislation or other
means.
Table 3.2 shows the largest media companies in Europe by turnover in 2008.
Vivendi SA Vivendi Universal is the third largest company in the world by 2002
turnover. The companies operating in Vivendi are Canal, Universal
Music Group, Vivendi Universal Games, NBC Universal and telecom
operators in France and Morocco. It acquired Seagram Co of Canada in
a USD55 billion merger. This means that Vivendi is in control of
Universal Studios, Universal Pictures and Universal Music Group
which also means that Vivendi is the European version of Hollywood.
Bertelsmann It is the seventh largest media company in the world. Groups under this
company include EuropesÊs largest private broadcasting group, RTL
Group, the publishing company Random House, the music company
BMG, printing firms Arvato, magazine and newspaper publishing
under Gruner + Jahr and Prisma Presse.
Lagardere It is a French company with varied business activities such as
Media publishing and media interests plus military-industry affiliates. It is
currently the largest magazine publisher in the world and the 10th
largest magazine publisher in US. Elle magazine is published in 39
editions. Globally, it has 40 million readers. It markets and promotes
Elle Channel with the Parisian cosmetic company Estee Lauder Clinique
brands.
Reed Elsevier The eighth largest media company in the world and world leading
publisher of information for professional uses.
Pearson The Pearson publishing house is the tenth largest media company in the
world. The three main divisions in the company publish under Pearson
Education, Financial Times Group, and Penguin Books.
ARD It is the largest public service broadcaster in Germany.
BBC BBC is the largest public service broadcaster in Britain and major
exporter of television programmes in Europe and the world.
RTL Group This company is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, the largest private
broadcasting group which offers services to more than ten European
states. More than 120 million people Europeans watch these broadcasts
every day.
EMI The global music publisher.
BSkyB It is a satellite digital television company operating as a subsidiary
company of News Corporation, the fourth biggest media group in the
world under the control of Rupert Murdoch.
Daily Mail and It has newspaper publishing interest as well as local radio and
General Trust information publishing in Britain.
TFI TFI is the largest free-to-air television in France and controls Eurosport.
Mediaset It is the biggest private broadcaster in Italy and is controlled by the
former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
ACTIVITY 3.3
Table 3.2 shows the various global media corporations and their
influence in the international market.
In your opinion, what are the factors that led to the emergence of these
global media corporations?
With regard to the Internet services, the World Wide Web has been so-well
received in the Scandinavian countries, even surpassing the US population.
These countries have the highest Internet penetration rates in the world.
The other non-Western groups in the world include cultural and linguistic
groups such as the Latin American companies of TV Globo, Televisa,
Cisneros/Venevision. In the Middle East, the regional geo-linguistic television
led to the formation of pan-Arabic channels such as the Middle East Broadcasting
Centre, (MBO) owned by Saudi interests (Thussu, 2000). Although the Saudis are
new to the media related activities, they have quickly established a presence
within a few decades. Media interests include pan-Arab satellites, newspapers
like Al Hayat and Al Sharq Ai Awsat and TV networks like MBC, Orbit, ART and
Rotana. MBO began broadcasting across Europe and North Africa and the
Middle East through Arabsat. It has a potential audience of more than 100
million Arab in population competing with the influential Al-Jazeera channel in
Doha.
Other Arab channels include the Arab Radio and Television (ART), owned by the
Saudi Prince al Waleed bin Talal. Sinclair (1996) recognised Egypt as the major
producer for the Arab geocultural market. Egypt operated its own satellite
channel Spacenet in 1991 and provided alternative news on the Gulf War for
Arab nationals in foreign soil.
ACTIVITY 3.4
3.3.2 China
The Chinese population of more than one billion automatically makes it one of
the biggest audiences in the world. The media industry has been rapidly
expanding and the viewership has increased from 18 million in 1975 to 1,020
million in 1995. In the 1980s and 1990s the total number of TV sets in China rose
to more than 80 million (Dominick, 1999). The Chinese Central Television
(CCTV) is a satellite channel serving 900 million viewers in the 29 provinces in
China and other countries in Asia, Australia and Africa. Needless to say, the
Chinese government maintained close control over the media in China and there
are periods of lax control to be followed by clampdowns. For example, in the
middle of the 1990s, the government banned satellite dishes and Chinese citizens
needed to register with the police if they wished to be on the Internet.
Hong Kong, a former British colony of about 12 million people, was returned to
Chinese control in 1997. Most assumed that the new Chinese territory would also
be severely controlled but it appears that the Chinese central government has
decided to allow a policy of less control of Hong KongÊs media industry. One of
the media moguls that understand the vast and profitable Chinese market is
Rupert Murdoch who set up the Chinese language Phoenix channel through the
News Corporation. Phoenix offers 24-hour Mandarin programmes to viewers in
China as well as the 30 million Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and North
America. In 1999, the channel was seen by more than 47.5 million households in
mainland China. Operating on the belief that local programming would be the
best model, Phoenix, like Zee TV of India concentrated on local fare such as the
popular matchmaking programme, Perfect Match.
The first Indian made movie was produced in 1913 and current studies show that
India produces about 1200 films annually, double that of USA. The world began
to take notice of this big production coming from Bombay (now Mumbai),
leading to the name Bollywood, a combination of the studios in the East and the
West, Bombay and Hollywood.
In the 1990s, Bollywood exported to the Indian diasporas in UK, USA and the
Arab countries, followed by demand from East Asian markets and Australia. A
report from Ernst and Young (2008) showed that USA and UK account for 50%-
60% of Indian export revenues. In US, popular films earned USD 1 million in an
opening weekend (Times of India, 2006).
The most successful production house is the Yash Raj Films which recorded the
highest turnover of USD 100 million in 2005. Hollywood was not able to
penetrate the Indian massive middle-class market, but instead, companies such
as Reliance from Bollywood is able to invest in Dreamworks, the flagship arm of
Hollywood (Lorenzen, 2009). McPhail (2010) reported that Bollywood has six
million workers in the cinema sector churning out successful films such as
Slumdog Millionaire which brought in a revenue of USD300 million plus eight
Oscars, including for Best Picture and Best Director.
Americanisation Globalisation
Cultural imperialism Internationalisation
Cultural products
Liebes, T., & Katz, E. (1993). The export of meaning: Cross-cultural readings of
Dallas. UK: Polity.
Lorenzen, M. (2009). Creativity and Context: Content, cost, chance, and collection
in the organization of the film industry. In Jeffcut, P., & A. Pratt: Creativity
and innovation in the cultural economy. London: Routledge: 93–117.
Sinclair, J. (1996). Mexico, Brazil, and the Latin World. In Jacka, E. et al. (Eds),
New Patterns in Global Television. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Straubhaar, J., & LaRose, R. (2004). Media now: Understanding media, culture
and technology. Wadsworth: Thomson.
Times of India. (2006). Bollywood makes a killing overseas with more prints.
Retrieved from www.timesof india.indiatimes.com.
INTRODUCTION
The business of communication, media and information are becoming a trend
that cannot be ignored. In this topic, we will focus on the international market of
cultural goods – mainly films, television, music and news – from industrialised
countries that have been circulated or disseminated to worldwide markets. These
cultural goods are not only consumed by almost all nations, but they also have
the tendencies to affect local cultural values.
Most governments in the world have the tendency to regulate the broadcasting
industry more than the print media. Malaysia, for instance, has ample
regulations for the print media. However, most governments retain some form of
control in the broadcast media.
BBC television restarted its service in 1946 with the specific duty of broadcasting
the Victory Parade. It was known as BBC TV which was later changed to BBC
One. In 1951, there were 600,000 TV viewers in UK and by 1956 it grew to six
million viewers. Other stations began to appear, beginning with Independent
Television or ITV in 1955, ending the BBC monopoly of British electronic
broadcasting. BBC Two was launched in 1964 as the first colour station (McPhail,
2010). Following the Thatcher interest in providing commercial stations, BBC
began looking for avenues to grow and developed services for foreign stations in
the US, culminating in the 1991 launching of BBC World digital services, one of
the worldÊs top providers of global news.
In 1995, the top television programmes were Coronation Street (16 million
viewers), Eastenders (14 million viewers) Peak Practice (14 million), The National
Lottery (12 million viewers) and The Bill (12 million viewers).
Rupert Murdoch managed to secure the cable and satellite channel, British Sky
Broadcasting (BSkyB), in 1993 and used the sports channel to attract subscribers.
Through this venture, Murdoch was also able to practically gain a monopoly
over new television technologies in the UK and gain dominance in UK pay-TV
(Hesmondhalgh, 2002). By 1999, BSkyB reported a total subscription of nearly
eight million. BBC would concentrate on being a high-quality public service
provider and is now EuropeÊs largest exporter of television programmes,
broadcasting to 554 media organisations in 67 countries. In 1998, TV programme
exports brought in 135 million pounds to BBC. In 1998 BBC Worldwide channels
were viewed by 230 million households worldwide. Thus, the BBC is significant
for its position as competitor to CNN and other regional and international
television network.
Herbert SchillerÊs work, Mass Communication and the American Empire (1992)
showed how the US developed the communication services in their effort to
counter what was alleged by the US government as a threat from the Soviet
expansion. US domination in satellite communications for surveillance purposes
later expanded into commercial broadcasting, financed by income from
advertising. As Schiller remarked:
Nothing less than the viability of the American industrial economy itself is
involved in the movement toward international commercialisation of
broadcasting. The private yet managed economy depends on advertising.
Remove the excitation and the manipulation of consumer demand and
industrial slowdown threatens.
Revenues Profits
Company Country
($m) ($m)
Walt Disney USA 22,976 1,850
Time Warner USA 14,582 168
News Corporation Australia 12,995 1 153
Viacom USA 12,096 (122)
Seagram Canada 10,734 946
The American television industry and the exports worldwide have been
profitable trade ventures and the major producers and studios ensured that their
products retained their lead by constantly upgrading their technological know-
how and maintaining massive marketing communication strategies in order to
maximise profits from overseas markets. Examples of the American zest to
conquer external markets are productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for
the European market and Mulan for the Chinese market.
The other contention that the West is the centre which dominates all Third World
countries is also questioned by some scholars because there are groups of countries
that are more influenced by their geocultural groupings (Hesmondhalgh, 2002).
For instance, countries of Eastern Europe have closer ties with Russia because
these countries share the same language. Other geocultural groupings are Mexico
and Brazil in South America, Taiwan and Hong Kong with China as well as the
Chinese speaking populations in Malaysia and Singapore. Egypt is the central
producer of Arabic TV programmes and export to many countries in North
Africa and the Middle East. The cultural capitals of Cairo, Mumbai, Hong Kong
and Mexico are major producers and exporters of cultural products to their
geocultural markets.
Latin American television industry, especially in Brazil and Mexico has been
developing rapidly since the 1960s. These countries are now major exporters to
the Hispanic geocultural markets and markets in USA, Europe and the UK.
Televisa in Mexico and TV Globo of Brazil are the largest producers of Spanish-
language television programmes. Another major production from Latin American
television is the popular soap opera, the telenovela, the highly successful Spanish
language melodrama series that run to about 100 episodes during prime time
and remained very popular worldwide especially in the Latina geocultural
markets from Mexico to the whole Latin American continent and exported to
Spain, Cuba, Russia, Puerto Rico and other non-English speaking countries. It
originated from radio soaps and runs successfully on the melodramatic formula
of simple storylines dealing with love and family relationships and telegenic
actors.
TV Globo produced the telenovela Escrava Isaura (Slave Girl Isaura), the
historical epic which was highly popular in Italy, France, Czechoslovakia, the
former Soviet Union and China. In China, 450 million viewers were hooked and
the book version of the melodrama was translated into Chinese. In Russia, The
Rich also Cry became a hit and the telenovela Gabriela became popular in
Angola. Some telenovelas are dubbed into other languages and in 1990, TV
GloboÊs entertainment programmes were exported to 130 countries garnering a
TV revenue of USD4.4 billion.
IDATE also reported that Latin America showed a good level of growth in the TV
market with Brazil as the biggest market, capturing 44% of the total Latin
American market. However, the region in comparison is still a small producer,
capturing only 7.8% of the global market. The African/Middle Eastern market is
the smallest regional market and has a share of 3.6 % of the global market.
In Asia, the Japanese television programmes began to make inroads into former
colonies such as South Korea. South Korea only allowed the entry of Japanese TV
programmes in the 1990s after a long period of embargo. Taiwan only began
importing Japanese programmes in 1993. McPhail (2010) reported that Japanese
TV dramas began to be aired by STAR TV in the 1990s. Oshin, the story of the
servant girl, became a big hit in 28 Asian countries. Figure 4.2 shows the export
of Japanese TV programmes by region while Figure 4.3 shows the exports by
genre.
South North
China Japan East America Europe Others Total
Asia
Audiovisual 5.8% 39.4% 15.5% 27.6% 7.6% 4.1% 100.0%
Book 10.6% 11.6% 11.5% 42.7% 9.3% 14.4% 100.0%
Cartoon 10.3% 15.4% 12.8% 23.1% 38.5% 0.0% 100.0%
Game 30.9% 31.1% 13.2% 17.7% 5.3% 1.8% 100.0%
Character 15.5% 2.3% 6.7% 33.9% 21.3% 20.4% 100.0%
Entertainment 3.9% 52.9% 3.9% 15.7% 5.9% 17.6% 100.0%
Total share 21.8% 25.3% 12.3% 25.3% 8.6% 6.8% 100.0%
The US dominates the global supply of television programmes but there are
other players selling packages to their national and geocultural markets too.
Researchers have provided possible explanations to the rise of non-western
television content, one of which is that TV melodrama is the newer
representative of the new „universality‰, and it provides avenues for tackling
every day life matters in the form of comedy, tragedy, entertainment, action and
romance.
ACTIVITY 4.1
Table 4.6 shows the Big Six in the global music industry, four of which are also
countries in the core Western nations such as EMI Group (UK), Time Warner
Music (US), Bertelsmann (RCA/BMG) and Philips/Polygram (Holland). Sony
and Matsushita of Japan are the two Asian giants in the group. As can be readily
understood, the world music industry is managed by these entities.
McPhail (2010) identifies a slightly different structure in the leading global music
industries. He recognises five major players and all five are from the core nations,
namely, Universal Music Group (UMG) from France, Sony Music from Japan,
EMI Group from UK, Warner Music from US, and Bertelsmann from Germany.
However, in 2003, Sony Music merged with Bertelsmann. Table 4.7 lists the
leading names in the global music industry.
Universal Music UMG, which is owned by Vivendi, France, is the worldÊs largest
Group group. It has two main units, the recorded music and music
publishing. It has branches in 77 countries and employs about 10,000
members of staff. UMG has 18 labels and very famous artistes such
as ABBA, Bryan Adams, Rolling Stones, Sting, Julio Iglesias, Black
Eyed Peas and many other world class performers.
Sony Music It became the second largest music company after the merger of
Sony Music Entertainment Group of Japan and Bertelsmann of
Germany. The artists under this group include Celine Dion, Mariah
Carey, Barbra Streisand, Bob Dylan, and Will Smith. SonyÊs partner,
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) had artists like Elvis Presley,
Frank Sinatra and Carlos Santana. Sony music group wrote the
music for Playstation 3 and signed a deal with YouTube.
Warner Music This group is the third largest conglomerate formed after Time Inc,
Group bought over Warner Bros. at the end of the 1980s. There are about
1000 artists under the various labels including Eric Clapton, Faith
Hill and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their artistes are available on the
online site and over 150 stores worldwide.
EMI Group EMI is the fourth largest music corporation. Its labels include EMI,
Capitol, and Virgin Records. The artistes under their portfolio
include Diana Ross, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Spice Girls, Keith
Urban, and Ice Cube. EMI is facing some internal adjustments after
failing to merge with Time Warner in 1999 in its effort to create the
largest music group in the world. This USD20 billion deal was
checked by the European UnionÊs Merger Task Force.
Music, especially popular music for the younger audience is one genre of
international content that appears more global than others because popular
music does not depend too much on language. Popular music of the West had
origins in various traditions and cultures and has further fused the music into
new sounds, such as „world music‰ that comprises various sounds from all over
the world. These new sounds are more receptive to the world audience,
especially the younger generation.
much higher profit margins in the form of compact discs (CDs). Current popular
recording artists are mostly Americans and British, comprising mega names like
AmericaÊs Madonna, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and the British
group Spice Girls to name a few.
MTV was the first music service to be aired on a 24-hour basis, 7 days-a-week. Its
income is mainly generated from advertising which is targeted at the 12–34-year
old age group. Its website, MTV.com is still the most popular site amongst an
estimated 80,000 music websites.
One of the strategies that made MTV a success is its recognition of the strong ties
to local sounds, thus making MTV a place for Americans as well as local music.
However, American pop music still topped most of the worldÊs charts. For
example, pop queen Madonna and the Rolling Stones topped the charts in Latina
MTV. The European MTV is also dominated by American artistes despite a
ruling enforcing a 30% airing of local European artistes.
Member States shall ensure where practicable and by appropriate means that
a broadcasters reserve the European works⁄ a majority proportion of their
transmission time, excluding the time appointed to news, sports events,
games, advertising and teletext services. This proportion ⁄ should be
achieved progressively, on the basis of suitable criteria.
McPhail however, observed that MTV, through electronic colonialism had indeed
marginalised local artistes and indigenous genres of music, giving examples of
the African and Australian aboriginal music. McPhail reiterated that the objective
of MTV is to appeal to the youth market of the world and to colonise and
capitalise on the youth culture. In its latest Internet venture, MTVÊs own Internet
service, MTVi Group targeted youths with credit cards who can purchase music
by downloading music and merchandise materials. In a sense, MTV is fully
aware of the potential of the music industry and is powerful enough to influence
the shape of the global popular culture amongst youths.
ACTIVITY 4.2
United States is the leading exporter of music and the American entertainment
industry revenue is mainly derived from television programmes.
Global television news, newsreels, photos supplied by CNN, BBC, AP, Getty
and Reuters are the main world exporters. Similarly, television programming
and feature films are also mainly from the West. US supplies to over two-
thirds of global video programmes.
The US dominates the global supply of television programmes but there are
other players selling packages to their national and geocultural markets too
like Latin America and Korea.
In the global music industry, there are the Big Six, four of which are countries
in the core Western nations such as, EMI Group (UK), Time Warner Music
(US), Bertelsmann (RCA/BMG) and Philips/Polygram (Holland).
The largest global television and music entities clearly have a stronghold on
many nations of the world. They are able to even decide on the selection of
labels and artistes, not to mention being influential enough to dictate tastes
and trends amongst youths of the world. These conglomerates are powerful
and they are able to enjoy huge economic returns from a rapidly growing
market for cultural products.
Americanisation Homogenisation
Conglomerate Indigenous culture
Global television Internationalisation
Geocultural Popular cultural products
Schiller, H. I. (1992). Mass communication and the American empire. New York:
International Arts and Sciences Press.
Straubhaar, J., & LaRose, R. (2004). Media now: Understanding media, culture
and technology. Wadsworth: Thomson.
Tunstall, J. (1994). The media are American: Anglo-American media in the world
(2nd ed.). London, England: Constable.
UNESCO. (1998). World culture report 1998: Culture, Creativity and Markets.
Paris: UNESCO.
INTRODUCTION
This topic features an introductory discussion of international news channels. In
general, these are 24-hour television news channels that can be viewed by
audiences in different countries and world regions via satellite, cable and the
Internet. With a viewership that crosses national boundaries, international news
broadcasting is creating a global public sphere (Hannerz, 1996; Volkmer, 2003)
insofar as media is considered an important element of public discourse, public
spheres and political communication.
This topic discusses the role of CNN as a pioneer of both the rolling news
genre and international news channels. It also introduces you to major
international news channels currently making up the global sphere of
international television news broadcasting.
SELF-CHECK 5.1
Look at the list of international news channels in Table 5.1 and answer
these questions.
1. Are you familiar with any of these news channels?
2. What do you think about the number of international news channels
available? Do you think it is too many or too few?
3. Does your country have its own international news channel? Hint:
Look up World Broadcasting Channel on the Internet.
5.1 OVERVIEW
International news broadcasting began in the 20th century and is intensifying in
the 21st century with the proliferation of rolling news channels beamed via
satellite or streamed via the Internet (Paterson & Sreberny, 2004; Thussu, 2010).
The Cable News Network (CNN) is a pioneer in satellite and 24-hour global
television news broadcasting (Volkmer, 1999). Following CNNÊs success and
popularity, a host of other similar television news channels, for example, satellite
news channels of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Euro News and
many others have emerged (Cushion, 2010; Rai & Cottle, 2010). Along with these
satellite news channels, other earlier ventures in international news broadcasting
such as the famed Voice of America (VOA) gave rise to an international sphere of
television news broadcasting (Cushion, 2010; Rai & Cottle, 2010; Volkmer, 1999).
While commercial news broadcasters such as CNN (owned by Time Warner Inc)
and Fox News (owned by Rupert MurdochÊs News Corp) are usually driven by
financial imperatives, many other international news broadcasters were
established with the twin aims of reporting world news from the perspective of a
particular region whilst simultaneously presenting a regional or local news to
audiences to an international audience; for example, Channel News Asia, China
Central Television (CCTV) and France 24. Still others, such as BBC World, Euro
News etc, were established as public service broadcasters, funded by government
grants, but editorially independent from state control.
ACTIVITY 5.1
Although it appears that there are many international news channels that reach
across most world regions, it is important to note that there is a difference
between a news channelÊs „reach‰, and an audienceÊs „access‰ to the various
news channels that are available in the region (Rai & Cottle, 2010). In general,
international news broadcasters negotiate with operators of distribution
networks (i.e. satellite, cable and IPTV systems) to carry their news channels and
allow these international broadcasters to expand their „reach‰ across vast and
diverse geographic regions. While terrestrial television channels generally reach
viewers for free (e.g. MalaysiaÊs RTM and Media Prima television channels), it is
a different matter for satellite, cable and even IPTV channels.
Therefore, international television channels compete with one another for the
relatively limited attention and finite financial resources of these relatively small
numbers of audiences (when compared to the number of audiences with access
to terrestrial channels). In the competitive sphere of international news channels,
it is largely the Western news channels, notably CNNI, BBC World, and Fox
News that are leading the competition. A newer entrant into this group of elite
international news channels is Al Jazeera English, established in 2006, but
already a serious player in the global news sphere. These leading international
news channels are able to access greater numbers of audiences across virtually all
world regions, whereas other international channels find it more difficult to
penetrate markets outside of their own region. Mughda Rai and Simon Cottle
(2010) explain:
While an increasing number of non-Western channels are beamed over the air
space of Western nations, the extent to which they are distributed and
available within Western households is often fairly limited. To provide a
simple analogy, CNNI is available in virtually every Indian household with
satellite television, while in the USA it is considerably more difficult and
expensive to gain access to ZEE News broadcasts. These distribution
structures are creating an interesting paradox in which the news markets of
the non-Western world, in many cases, are more pluralised, offering a mix of
regional and national channels alongside the major Western players, while
Western news markets remain dominated by their own channels with few
non-Western choices.
ACTIVITY 5.2
The following pages will profile several international news channels currently in
operation in various world regions. We will begin with the pioneer and „market
leader‰ of international television news, CNN International, followed by several
of its major global competitors. Next, we will profile some major regional news
channels in Europe, South America and the Asia Pacific. However, we will
discuss news media in the Middle East and North Africa in Topic 7.
5.2 CNN
CNN International is the global news channel of the Cable News Network
(CNN), owned by US-based transnational media conglomerate, Time Warner Inc.
The following year, Turner launched a second channel, CNN2 or CNN Headline
News with continuous 30-minute news segments, allowing viewers to catch the
news at any time of the day. In this way, Turner and CNN pioneered the rolling
news format, and the 24-hour television news genre. CNN Headline News
eventually became known as the Head Line News (HLN), an entertainment and
celebrity news channel.
In 1985, CNN International (CNNI) was launched, and became the first
international all-news channel. In many regions outside the US, CNNI was
simply referred to as CNN.
In 1980, CNN was available to about 1.7 million US households. In the second
decade of the twenty-first century, it is estimated that CNN reaches potentially
two billion viewers in over 200 countries via CNN (also known as CNN/U.S),
CNNI and numerous other sister networks. CNNÊs vast international reach via
live satellite transmission, created the first possibilities of a global public sphere,
setting the international news agenda for viewers around the world. By doing so,
CNN „reshaped the conventional agenda of international or „foreign‰ news and
created a platform for worldwide communication‰ (Volkmer, 1999, p. 2). Being
the first international news channel, CNN was also ahead of others in garnering
transnational influence and setting the global news agenda.
A pivotal point where CNN became a global news leader was during the first
Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait, prompting a US-led international military
coalition to intervene. Most international journalists were asked to leave Iraq at
the start of the war, but CNN journalists were allowed to remain. Thus, CNN
succeeded in covering the war live from inside Baghdad. This meant that other
news organisations around the world depended solely on CNNÊs visuals and
CNN reporting. In other words, news organisations were forced to depend on
CNNÊs perspective of the war. This became an important impetus for other
countries and news organisations to establish their own transnational news
channels.
From the late 1990s onwards, the world witnessed a steady proliferation of
24-hour satellite news channels, with numerous transnational channels, and also
local national news channels being established in developed and developing
countries around the world. As mentioned earlier, some of the primary aims of
establishing international news channels included commercial profit; the desire
to cover international news events through a particular regional or national
perspective; for nations to exert „soft power‰ by providing international viewers
information and (positive) news about local news events.
The origins of the „CNN effect‰ lies in the US government and other core
nationsÊ reaction and responses to CNNÊs comprehensive and intense coverage of
major crises events , namely Chinese pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen
Square in 1989, the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall in modern Europe, the
first Gulf War, and the Battle of Mogadishu. In each of these events, CNN
coverage and its influence on domestic and foreign public agendas caused the US
government and other core governments to feel pressured to issue statements
and to make a stand, and even to intervene.
The „CNN effect‰ initially referred to CNNÊs influence on the world political
arena, particularly during the 20th century. However, the global proliferation of
international news channels in the twenty-first century has expanded the
meaning of „CNN effect‰ to include other international news channels. In
particular, the „CNN effect‰ refers to the powerful influence of the worldÊs major
news channels, namely CNN, BBC, Rupert MurdochÊs Fox and Sky News
channels and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network (Cushion, 2010; Flournoy, 2001;
Gilboa, 2005; McPhail, 2010; Robinson, 2002; Seib, 2008; Volkmer, 1999).
BBC World News was launched in 1991 as the BBC World Service Television
outside of Europe, eventually being known as BBC World in 1995 and 1996 when
it was re-launched as a 24-hour news channel. The name was later changed to
BBC World News in 2008.
BBC World News is owned and operated by BBC World Ltd., one of BBCÊs
commercial companies drawing revenue from subscription fees and advertising.
BBC World News broadcasts in English to over 200 countries and territories
across the world with an estimated audience reach of over 75 million viewers.
The BBC World News channel owes its genesis to the BBC World Service which
had provided radio service to the British Empire since 1932, and on-going
television broadcasts since the end of World War II. The BBC World Service is
funded in part by the British Foreign Office as well as television licence fees that
fund BBC operations inside the UK, supplemented by the commercial activities
of a wholly owned subsidiary. BBC Worldwide Ltd. BBC World News is
essentially an English-language news channel. However, like CNN, the BBC also
operates a number of regional news channels under its BBC World Service
division, separate from BBC World News, including BBC Arabic, BBC Hindi and
BBC Persian.
ACTIVITY 5.3
Fox News Channel was launched in the USA in 1996, and provided intense
competition to CNN in the US. Where CNN pioneered the rolling news genre,
and BBC emphasised its public service function as a provider of quality
programming, Fox News focused strongly on visual presentation of news. Fox
News made common the use of attention-grabbing graphics and text that
illustrated and summarised key points of a news story. Even though Fox News
Channel carries the slogan „fair and balanced‰, the network is frequently
criticised in the US and internationally as being biased in favour of the US
Republican Party, and the neo-conservative movement in US domestic and
foreign policies and action. Fox News is available in the US and internationally
on a range of satellite, cable, IPTV and Web-TV systems.
In addition to Fox News, News Corp also owns shares in Sky News. Sky News
belongs to the UK satellite television operator, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).
News Corp. holds a minority stake in BskyB, and partially owns Sky News
which is internationally available as the Sky News International channel. In
addition to Sky News International, there are also several regional variations to
the channel, including Sky News Arabia, Sky News Australia. Like CNNI and
BBC Word News and CNN, Sky News International is available internationally
via satellite, cable, IPTV and Web-TV.
In late 2010 and early 2011, organisational restructuring of the Al Jazeera network
downsized the Kuala Lumpur and Washington DC broadcast centres, leaving the
channel to broadcast from just Doha and London, alternatively.
Since its launch, Al Jazeera English managed to steadily extend its reach to most
of the world, but faced stiff opposition by satellite and cable carriers in the US. It
is widely believed that American carriers were influenced by neo-conservative
movements opposed to Al Jazeera English. However, in 2011, in part due to Al
Jazeera EnglishÊs „Demand Al Jazeera in the USA‰ campaign, the station finally
managed to secure broadcasting rights via satellite and cable in a handful of US
cities. The stationÊs campaign continues with the goal of greater reach across the
US (source: http://www.aljazeera.com/demandaljazeera/).
Although Al Jazeera English is a relatively new player in the global news sphere,
it is now seen as a serious competitor to leading international news channels like
CNNI and BBC World News. While CNN, BBC, and other major global players
like Fox News Channel and Sky News are Western-owned organisations, Al
Jazeera English the first, and to date the only, major global channel from a non-
Western region (Pedrosa, 2008).
5.6.1 Europe
Similar to the BBC World News and its public broadcasting genesis, Europe also
boasts a number of public service international news broadcasters. Among these
are Euronews, GermanÊs Deutsche Welle and France 24. Similar to the BBC
World News and its public broadcasting genesis, these news broadcasters also
subscribe to a public service ethic.
(a) Euronews
Euronews was launched in 1992 by the European Broadcasting Union in
response to CNN and its exclusive coverage of the first Gulf War. The
channel covers European and world news events from a pan-European
perspective. Euronews comprises public broadcasters and state television
stations across Europe.
5.6.2 Asia
There are a number of international news broadcasters throughout Asia. Among
the major broadcasters are JapanÊs Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai World (NHK World),
SingaporeÊs Channel News Asia (International) and China Central Television
News (CCTV News).
(a) NHK
NHK is JapanÊs public broadcaster. NHK WorldÊs television station was
launched in 1995 aimed at Japanese expatriates in Asia, and named NHK
Asia TV. As the organisation began expanding beyond the Asian region, it
was renamed NHK World Television in 1996. NHK World TelevisionÊs
news and informational channel was established in 2009 as an English-
language news channel broadcaster. It became a 24-hour news channel in
early 2012, reaching viewers around the world via satellite, cable and IPTV.
Apart from providing news and information, NHK World also aims to
„foster mutual understanding between Japan and other countries and
promote friendly and cultural exchange‰ (Source: http://www3.nhk.or.jp)
ACTIVITY 5.4
CNN is a pioneer in the 24-hour rolling news format, and in the international
television news broadcasting genre.
Major international news broadcasters are from the core countries of US and
UK. These are: CNN International, BBC World News and News CorpÊs Fox
News Channel/Sky News. The only non-Western global news broadcaster is
Al Jazeera English.
Boyd-Barrett, C., & Boyd-Barrett, O. (2010b). Latin American 24/7 News Battle
for Honduras. Globam Media Journal, 9(16), Article No. 6.
Cottle, S., & Rai, M. (2008). Television news in South Africa: Mediating an
emerging democracy. Journal of Southern African Studies 34(2), 344–358.
Gilboa, E. (2005). The CNN effect: The search for a communication theory of
international relations. Political communication 22(1), 27–44. Retrieved from
http://www.informaworld.com.
Paterson, C., & Sreberny, A. (2004). International news in the 21st century:
Published by John Libbey Pub. for University of Luton Press.
Rai, M., & Cottle, S. (2010). Global news revisited: Mapping the contemporary
landscape of satellite television news. In S. Cushion & J. Lewis (Eds.), The rise
of 24-hour news television: Global perspectives (pp. 51–79). New York: Peter
Lang.
Robinson, P. (2002). The CNN effect: The myth of news, foreign policy and
intervention. London: Routledge.
Seib, P. (2008). The Al Jazeera effect: How the new global media are re-shaping
world politics. Washington D.C.: Potomac Books.
Volkmer, I. (1999). News in the global sphere: A study of CNN and its impact on
global communication. Luton: University of Luton Press.
Volkmer, I. (2003). The global network society and the global public sphere.
[Thematic section]. development 46(1), 9–16.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
1. Describe the early development of international newspaper
companies;
2. Identify the major news agencies at the international level; and
3. Explain the services offered by the global news agencies.
INTRODUCTION
News has been flowing across borders since ancient times – by horses, carrier
pigeons, foot messengers, by ships across the oceans and continents, ferrying
important pieces of information for trade, war and geopolitical forays into the
new world. Newspaper companies are the earliest media companies to have
networks across the world. Strategically, many newspaper companies set up
agencies abroad so that they could supply news back to the home bases and fulfil
the various needs of their governments and readers. During the expansion of the
colonial empires, such services were vital for the empiresÊ administrative
purposes and economic enterprises.
The expansion of news companies and increase in news flows were significantly
aided by the development of newswire services based on the telegraphic
technology invented by Samuel Morse in 1837. This invention enabled rapid
The telegraph was also instrumental in the military operations against the
Russians during the Crimean War. The international telegraph system also led
to the birth of news agencies, an important development in the history of
newspapers.
The French established the French Havas Agency, the precursor to Agence
France Presse (AFP) in 1835. AFP primarily served France while Havas
controlled the market in South America and Indo-China. This was followed by
the formation of the Associated Press (AP) which began operations as a
cooperative newspaper in the US in 1846. The British then set up Reuters in 1851
to supply international news for the British Empire.
United Press International (UPI) began as a rival service operator (Straubhaar &
LaRose, 2002; Vivian, 2002).
During the early days of wire services these news agencies sold news and still
photographs but in the current multimedia and converging environment, they
provide video news feeds for broadcast media and information and financial
databases (Thussu, 2000). Today, media companies set up their agencies across
the world and appoint correspondents to ensure that their news is bought first by
the world media. The news agencies offer wire services to a global marketplace
and are driven by profit. The list below is an example of the major global news
agencies.
(a) Thomson Reuters
(b) The Associated Press (AP)
(c) Agence France Presse (AFP)
(d) Bloomberg
(e) Dow Jones & Company
(f) Xinhua News Agency
(g) Inter Press Services (IPS)
SELF-CHECK 6.1
6.1 REUTERS
The expansion of the British Empire between 1880 and 1914 was also
instrumental to the development of Reuters. The spread of the Empire was
complimented by the expansion of trade and foreign investments during the 19th
century. With the advent of telegraph, the communication technology of the
time, Reuters was set to expand alongside the Empire. Telegrams sent through
the Reuters offices reached as far as the colonial offices in New Zealand and
South Africa.
Reuters began the earliest wire services in October 1851. Paul Julius Reuter, an
immigrant German, set up office in London to supply business information,
mainly stock market quotations, to London and Paris. According to McPhail
(2010), Reuters soon developed its operations as a source for news and began
reporting on the wars and elections. Later it served the British press, the colonies
and the European countries. In 1855, it became the first wire-service company in
Europe and reported on the assassination of President Lincoln of the US. By
the 1870s, Reuters had branches in the colonial capitals in Calcutta, Bombay, and
Sri Lanka as well as services to Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Australia. In
East Asia, Shanghai became the headquarters of Reuters. India became an
important operations base and news market because of the importance of the
Jewel in the Crown (Read, 1992).
The early involvement has resulted in Reuters continuing to be one of the leading
business information agencies to this day. In 1999, Reuters clinched the number
one spot as the worldÊs largest multimedia corporation, supplying the global
financial markets and the news media with a range of information and news
products. Reuters has become the world's largest international news agency, and
is well-known across the globe as a leading provider of real-time, high-impact,
multimedia news and information services to newspapers, television and cable
networks, radio stations and websites around the globe.
In 1849, AP set up a bureau in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was an important port
of call for the Cunard shipping services. Thussu (2000) noted that in terms of
overall news output, AP was the largest news-gathering company, serving 15,000
news organisations all over the world, supplying news, photos, graphics, audio
and video to the global marketplace. APÊs services are also available in German,
Swedish, Dutch, French and Spanish. The agency has won 50 Pulitzers including
30 photo Pulitzers.
AP launched AP All News Radio (ANR), a 24-hour radio newscast. More than
50 radio stations are now part of the profitable all-news format. Other activities
include a sampling of the following:
(a) Sale of packaged news to non-members such as governments and
corporations;
(b) Sale of AP Online, a group of subject-specific news wires tailored to
customersÊ needs;
AP has introduced many firsts in the news world. However, like all newspaper
businesses around the globe, AP too faces many challenges such as calls to
withdraw membership and pressure to reduce fees as well as requests for
discounts for their services. Its diversified activities also brought in the issues of
copyright.
UPI shares during most of the 1990s were owned by Saudi media interests but
beginning from 2000 it was purchased by News World Communications (NWC)
a global multimedia company. The new owners are part of the Unification Church
headed by Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Now NWC operates 20 newspapers at
the global level including The Washington Times.
AFP is now a global news agency operating from its bureaus located in
110 countries, employing 1200 journalists and photographers as well as
2000 stringers. AFP also has 102 correspondents in peripheral nations – 22 in
Latin America and Mexico, and another 80 in Africa and Asia. Thus, it has
representations from five geographical zones, namely: North, Central and South
America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Middle East.
AFP was the first news agency to report on the demise of Stalin, Pope John Paul I
and Indira Gandhi. It was also complimented for its coverage of the 1999 war in
the Balkans and the Chechnya conflict. Interestingly, AFP was also the agency
that did not fall for the weapons of mass destruction theory spun by other world
agencies.
In 1997, the news feed from AFP was received by BloombergÊs multipanel
information screen produced in London using the European Canal Satellite. AFP
continues to provide services reaching to over thousands of subscribers including
radio, television, newspapers, corporations from its Paris headquarters as well as
offices in Washington DC, Hong Kong, Nicosia and Montevideo.
6.5 BLOOMBERG
Bloomberg was formed in 1982 in New York by Michael Bloomberg with the aid
of Duncan MacMillan, Thomas Secunda and Charles Zegar. It was established as
the Innovative Market Systems before it became known as Bloomberg LP in 1986.
Bloomberg is a global information services, news and media company. The firmÊs
core business, the Bloomberg Professional, delivers online material to Bloomberg
ACTIVITY 6.1
Bloomberg Professional comprises four primary services as follows:
(a) Bloomberg Tradebook
(b) Bloomberg Electronic Trading
(c) Bloomberg Data Licences
(d) Bloomberg Roadshows
Launched in 1994, the first Bloomberg television product was called Bloomberg
Business News, followed by Bloomberg Information TV and finally the European
Bloomberg Information TV. Bloomberg Television offers a 24-hour financial news
channel that gives information on the economic and political news that affect
markets. It has a unique TV Data Screen that offers breaking news headlines and
financial data at all times. It also offers the top 50 major news stories for each
half-hour, 24 hours a day (McPhail, 2010).
By the mid 1990s, this company not only began to catch up with Reuters and
Dow Jones but equalling and perhaps even exceeding them as global multimedia
giants. BloombergÊs terminals and news service began to grow in the overseas
market, including Malaysia.
The company is best known for its flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal,
the major global daily newspaper covering financial, business, national and
international news since 1886. It also started other well-known publications such
as Asian Wall Street Journal (1976), Wall Street Journal Europe (1983), The Wall
Street Journal Special Editions, BarronÊs (1921) and Far Eastern Economic Review
(1946).
In broadcasting, Dow Jones owns half of CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia and
provides news content to them. The company joined Reuters to establish a new
interactive electronic global service to provide business information for corporate
and professional clients. Its news wires have over a million subscribers globally.
In late 2004, it acquired MarketWatch Inc, a highly profitable online financial
news and information, for USD519 million.
ACTIVITY 6.2
6.7 XINHUA
Xinhua started in November 1931 as the Red China News Agency, Xinhua.
Headquartered in Beijing, it is a publisher as well as a government news agency.
It owns over 20 newspapers and a dozen magazines (Shrivastava, 2007). The
agency has set up worldwide networks which combine satellite communication
technologies with optical fibre cable. It delivers its news in various languages
including Chinese, Russian, French, English, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese and
Spanish.
On its website, Xinhua began to establish a new section for AsiaNet and provides
images, original releases in English, Chinese translations and edited translations
(www.asianetnews.net).
ACTIVITY 6.3
Xinhua is known for its long, dull articles that avoid criticism of
Chinese government officials or action, and is heavily censored. Is this
good or bad for its clients? Discuss this with your coursemates.
Initially the primary objective of IPS was „to fill the information gap between
Europe and Latin America through a snail mail-borne feature news service‰
(www.ips-tv.net). It broadened its objective „to fulfil the hopes of Third World
countries and peoples for a new international economic order‰ (www.ips-tv.net).
It distributes information about developing countries to the industrialised
countries. This led to the formation of a regional structure · IPS Africa (Harare,
Zimbabwe), IPS Asian (Manila, Philippines), IPS Latin America (San Jose, Costa
Rica), IPS Europe and Mediterranean, IPS Middle East, and IPS North America
and the Caribbean (New York).
IPS has more than 250 journalists in more than 100 nations and provides news
and information services for more than 1,000 clients, among the conventional and
new media. IPS utilises financial sources from subscribers and media clients. As
the benefactor from various foundations, IPS was able to become the sixth largest
international news-gathering organisation (Rauch, 2003, p. 89).
IPS news is available in English and Spanish and in the form of translations in
10 additional languages including Arabic, Dutch, Finnish, French, German,
Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Swahili and Swedish. It operates five newspapers
under its printed publications division namely Terra Viva Conference Daily,
Terra Viva Europe Daily Journal, G-77 Journal, IPS Features, and Rural
Development as well as bulletin such as Rural Development and Africa Bulletin.
Its IPS Columnist Services provide a series of exclusive columns written by
statesmen, opinion makers, opposition leader, officials and experts offering
insight on major issues (McPhail, 2010).
In 2010, IPS produced 332 podcasts in English and 339 in Spanish as well as
18 original videos globally and a total of 38 of these videos were distributed and
are available at IPS-TV. It also hosted blogs such as Gender Masa, Lobelog and
heavy Metal Colombia (www.ips.org). This shows that although IPS represents
developing countries, it has made many efforts to represent a model of
developmental journalism.
The major services are all based in industrial core nations with an extensive
bureau network in other core nations and nearly all semi-peripheral nations.
AP and Reuters, the leader of global news agencies are owned by the US.
Bloomberg and Dow Jones and Company both specialise in a niche market,
namely business and financial news and information with clients around the
world.
As official news agency of PRC, Xinhua is regarded as the „eye and tongue‰
of the party to observe what is important for the masses and passing on the
information to the government.
Markham, J. (1967). Voices of the red giants. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Read, D. (1992). The power of news: the history of Reuters, 1849–1989. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Straubhaar, J., & LaRose, R. (2000). Media now: Communication media in the
information age. US: Wadsworth.
Vivian, J. (2011). The media of mass communication. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
www.asianetnews.net
www.bloomberg.com
www.ips.org
www.ips-tv.net
INTRODUCTION
This topic shall focus on the development of Arab media in the Middle East and
North Africa. We will track the changes from traditional and heavily controlled
entities to one that is currently undergoing rapid modernisation and thus
shedding the image of closed and ultra conservative enclaves. You will be
exposed to the history of this new openness, heralding a new beginning for
media in the region.
The genesis of the Arab media may be traced to the events that occurred during
World War I and the ultimate end of the era of the Ottoman Empire which ruled
the Middle East and parts of North Africa for 400 years (De Beer & Merrill, 2009;
McPhail, 2010). The defeat to the Western powers led to British control of Egypt
and the Arabian Gulf. Through the League of Nations, Britain also took control of
Palestine, Jordan and Iraq while France took over the North African states of
Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.
During this period in history, modern Turkey was ruled under Kemal Ataturk in
1923 who turned Turkey into a Westernised and secular country. Later, in 1948,
events after World War II led to the creation of the state of Israel in the middle of
the Arab world and the beginning of the plight of the Palestinians in their own
homeland. In unison, the Arab voices began to unite in their fight against
occupation, and with the Egyptian Voice of the Arabs radio in the 1960s, Arab
nationalism was stirred.
The discussion in Topic 7 centres on the new developments and the emergence of
the new Arab news and broadcasting centres in the 1990s that have changed the
face of mass communication in the region as the people seek to disseminate a
wide range of information as well as create a more informed and open society in
a previously heavily controlled socio-political environment. That is why recent
developments are exciting to watch because a freer media environment has
resulted in the opening up of closed societies, thus offering a new sense of
freedom of information to a majority of its people.
ACTIVITY 7.1
Scholars of the Arab world often reminded readers that the term „the Arab
media‰ is misleading because there is no such element of unity in the Arab
world, especially not in the media environment. Vivian (2011) sees the media
systems in some of the Middle Eastern countries as diverse political systems
which are driven by theologies although some nations are pragmatically oriented
towards creating a pan-Arabic mass audience. There are vast differences in terms
of infrastructure, technical capacity and content in some Arab countries as in the
liberal democratic press that ensued.
In the UK, the big news for this year was the phone-hacking of famous British
citizens by the News of the World journalists. Consequently the NoW was
discontinued after 168 years in service to the British public. In the meantime, the
headline news in Europe is the biggest of financial woes leading to the collapse of
banks in Greece and now Spain while the spotlight on China is about how the
nation is currently experiencing an economic boom.
The BBC first established the Arabic Service in 1938. Western powers targeted the
Middle East because of the geo-strategic importance of the region as the source
of the worldÊs largest supply of oil. Therefore, some media systems in the
Arab states began to be influenced by Western ideology while others tried to
determine their own media philosophies and were able to retain their indigenous
content. In Egypt, President Gamal Nasser had to resort to the radio in order to
counter Western broadcasting of the Arab region (Thussu, 2000). This led to the
establishment of the „Voice of the Arabs‰ and the promotion of pan-Arabism in
the 1950s and 1960s. Pan-Arabism also took on the responsibility of operating the
Palestinian liberation radio which was broadcasted from Cairo, Beirut, Algiers,
Baghdad and Tripoli.
The BBC tried again to establish the Arab language service. This mission was not
successful and was finally abandoned in 1996. However, the initiative was later
taken-up by the Gulf state of Qatar which then started the 24/7 television news
service like the Atlanta-based CNN.
The Arab world is now gripped by news reporting of the Arab Spring (Thaurah
Syabab) which led to the demise of the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Libya
and Egypt. To date, the Arab world is reporting about the chaotic socio-political
situation in Syria. Previously, Arab newspapers would not leave out stories on
the Gulf War which finally toppled Saddam Hussein, followed by the September
11, 2001 attack in New York and the Al-Qaeda. The Arabic satellite station
Al Jazeera began to air Bin LadenÊs tapes after the September 11, 2001 and from
then on a new media phenomenon began to develop in the peninsula state of
Qatar, challenging the American domination in international news
Thus, Arab news agencies which used to assist the governments in disseminating
state information and controlling incoming flows of news from foreign sources
are now experiencing a new sense of purpose and effort to break free from
government control.
Arabia and Syria control the press system but paradoxically, Saudi Arabia, for
example, is lenient when it comes to the Internet, recognising it as vital to
international trade, economic development and cultural advances.
One unifying factor that moulded the Arab press into a unison of voices was the
anti-imperialist rhetoric present in the writings against the creation of the state of
Israel in 1948 and the subsequent occupation of Palestine by Israel (De Beer &
Merrill, 2009), which in turn created about 520,000 to 850,000 Palestinian
refugees. The Palestinian Occupation fired Pan-Arab nationalism and its form
was exhibited in most of the Arab press despite major differences in the 22 Arab
states.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia power centre is in the hands of the Al-
Saud royal family. The Kingdom became independent in 1932 and it is
a country ruled by Islamic conservatism. Media organisations are
under government control and a strict censorship central committee
oversees local and foreign media content.
(ii) Kuwait
The Freedom House Index (2012) listed Kuwait as a partly free media
system. It is a modern monarchy with an elected parliament and the
Kuwaiti press has the support of high technology capabilities and a
brand of journalism that is acceptable in the eyes of Western media
standards.
In 2006, the government introduced new media laws that ended state
monopoly of the press. Only the courts had the right to cancelation or
suspension of the media. The laws of the land too abolished
imprisonment for journalists. However, the authorities put in place a
law that prohibited blasphemy especially to „God, the Prophet, his
Companions and the Quran‰.
(i) Algeria
Unlike the Gulf countries, the North African states, consisting of
Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia came under French colonial rule.
Algeria was colonised by the French for a century until their
Independence in 1962. Algeria has a history of struggle between the
fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) Party and the Algerian
authorities. When the FIS won in the first round of elections in
December 1991, the army initiated a crackdown and tried to install
pro-government political parties in the later elections.
The Freedom house classified the Algerian press as „Not Free‰ and
the media system began to change after the Algerian constitution
introduced a form of political pluralism and a diversity of information
sources in 1989. During this period of relaxation of central control,
about 65 political parties were formed and there was a period of
rejuvenation and active political consciousness.
(ii) Lebanon
McPhail (2010) considers Lebanon to be the Tower of Babel of the
Arab media world. It was the Lebanese journalists who founded the
Egyptian paper al-Ahram and then opened up publications in Sudan,
Morocco and Qatar. Lebanon turned into the capital of Arab
journalism and centre of active political press (De Beer & Merrill,
2009). A freer atmosphere in the country attracted Arab leaders and
their political struggles which were published in the Lebanese press.
However, the thriving and open society in Lebanon ended after the
Israeli invasion in 1982 to expel the Palestinian refugees in the
Lebanese capital. Besides destroying the infrastructure, the Israeli
invasion also resulted in the death kneel of LebanonÊs thriving press
industry. Nevertheless, many of the trained journalists in Lebanon
began to practice in the other parts of the Arab press and some of
them started to publish news in London, including the leading Saudi-
backed Al-Hayat which began their London operation in 1988. Al-
Hayat was also printed in other Arabic capitals such as Riyadh,
Frankfurt and New York. London eventually became the centre of
intra-Arab media, a „pan-Arab media‰ headquarters. To this day, the
Palestinian paper Al Quds al Arabi and another Saudi-backed paper,
Ashary Alawat, continue their publications.
Thus, the Arab governments initiated moves to launch their own television
broadcasting, with the Saudi government taking the lead in establishing the
Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), a pan Arabic satellite channel which
provides news and general entertainment programmes. This media centre is
owned by the Saudi royal family and it was headquartered in London. In terms
of content, the MBC was able to operate free from government control and
followed the successful format of Western broadcast channels.
MBC offers quality news broadcasting and other programmes such as current
affairs, talk shows, musicals, features and serials. It started a programme with the
collaboration of the Voice of America called Dialogue with the West. Voice of
America (VOA) is a broadcast service operated by the US government into the
nations which are identified as being under state control.
MBC is owned by Shaikh Walid al-Ibrahim, the Saudi entrepreneur from the
wealthy royal house of the Saud. Such financial strength made it possible for
MBC to purchase the latest satellite technology and state-of-the-art
communication technology equipment. Shaikh Walid also had an interest in the
UPI news agency and favoured Western style journalism and content
development.
7.4.3 Al Jazeera
As mentioned in Topic 5, the BBC had planned to start an Arabic language
station but it failed to materialise. This idea was taken-up by Sheikh Hammad
bin Khalifa, a prince from Qatar who provided a funding of USD140 million, thus
launching the Arabic equivalent of US-based CNN in 1996. This new media
entity, Al Jazeera, became a first in the Arab world. Suddenly Arabs from all over
the region, whether militants or political critics, began calling in, voicing out their
grievances and offering ideas and suggestions to improve their lives and their
governments. It was therefore not surprising that some Arab countries sought to
ban Al Jazeera broadcasts into their countries. It was obvious that this new
network began to offer the other point of view, challenging both the local
governments and providing contra-flows to the US domination of news.
However, after the 9/11 incident, Al Jazeera began to turn its attention to the US
invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush Presidency criticised the network as
biased against the US and at one time the US government had to request other
nations of the world not to broadcast excerpts of Osama bin Laden which was
shown on Al Jazeera. Its bureau chief in Washington DC, Abderrahim Foukara,
provided a glimpse into the hearts of the Arab population in his explanation:
(McPhail, 2010)
Al Jazeera has now established itself as the Pan-Arab Voice in Qatar. In becoming
the new Global Arab Village, it began to take over the role of the Voice of the
Arabs radio in Cairo. Al Jazeera began to add other programmes such as the talk-
shows More Than One Opinion, The Opinion of the Other Opinion and The
Opposite Direction, bringing together people of different persuasions to argue
their points to audiences across the Arab world and beyond. There is a new spirit
of discussion and debates as well as heated arguments on the topics of the status
and roles of Arab women, religion and leaders of their countries.
The nature of Al JazeeraÊs content and guest lists have brought them in direct
confrontation with the advertisers, and had to be bailed out by the owners in
2003 after accumulating losses of 19 million pounds. The station refused to censor
its programmes and continued to provide an alternative service to the Arab
world. During the war in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera sold footage of the war to other
news channels. As a result, its office in Kabul was targeted by American smart
bombs. At other times, Al Jazeera broadcasted the true picture of the war and its
horrifying images to the whole world, negating the US claims of a „bloodless,
costless and clean war in Iraq‰. For that too, its bureau in Baghdad was bombed
in 2001.
Al Jazeera was able to build an audience of 50 million in 2000 and in 2003 the
station signed a service sharing agreement with BBC and CNN, thus explaining
the familiar faces from CNN and BBC appearing on the Arab network.
The Dubai Internet City (DIC) has attracted world-class computer companies as
well as the return of home companies that had migrated overseas. Companies
that have set-up their presence there include Microsoft, Oracle, Compaq, Sun
Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.
Its vision of a media hub is materialising because the MBC, the largest Middle
East media conglomerate has relocated to DMC from London. Other media
organisations include Arabian Radio Network (ARN), BBC World, CNN,
Reuters, Sony and Showtime Arabia.
ACTIVITY 7.2
As can be seen in the advertising and public relations (PR) sectors of the Arab
world, countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and to some extent Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia have exhibited some level of growth in the industry. De Beer & Merrill
(2009) also reported about advertising and public relations efforts in nations like
Qatar and Bahrain.
The Saudi government too uses the national and international PR institute as the
public affairs and corporate communications arm of the government. Increasing
commercial activities in the country means that there is a need for PR as a booster
for international trade, management communication and marketing communication.
The state of Kuwait has also established a national public relations association
institute. As in other Arab nations, advertising and PR are needed to meet the
increasing international trade and national commercial activities.
Current PR activities are also managed by agencies that collectively formed the
Middle East Public Relations Association (MEPRA). It was established in 2001 by
a group of PR agencies that seek to raise awareness of the discipline to broader
audiences especially in international standards and ethics. Another agency, the
Active PR and Marketing Communications Consultancy has established its
presence in the Dubai Media City (DMC) apart from its location in Riyadh.
A web page on Middle East advertising agencies listed all the advertising
agencies in the region, beginning from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. That is the indication of how the
region has developed along the lines of global communication activities.
There are pro-Western broadcasters who are seen as the voice of moderate
Arabs.
There are emerging globalised communication models from the Middle East.
De Beer, A. S., & Merrill, J. C. (2009). Global journalism: Topical issues and media
Systems. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Press Freedom in 2011: Breakthroughs and Pushback in the Middle East, 2012.
Freedom House.
Vivian, J. (2011). The media of mass communication. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
1. Explain the major global advertising agencies;
2. Describe the importance of the advertising agencies in the global
economy; and
3. Discuss the activities of these companies in the global economy and
its growth with the advent of technology.
INTRODUCTION
In the era of globalisation, advertising can be seen as being a contributing factor
to the success of companies in an increasingly competitive market. For McPhail
(2010), advertising is a necessary component in the global economy to create
consumer awareness and increase sales locally and internationally. With the
advent of the Internet, users can learn about products in other countries and
purchase them.
In this topic, you will be exposed to the major global advertising companies that
rank among the biggest firms in the world such as WPP Group, Omnicom
Group, Dentsu Inc, Interpublic Group of Company and Publicis Group. These
companies are based in developed nations and bring along values, attitudes and
business practices into all other countries, including economically developing
and less developing countries.
SELF-CHECK 8.1
The company was created in 1986 through the unification of three US advertising
giants, namely Doyle Dane Bernbach, BBDO, and Needham Harper Worldwide.
To date, it has 1500 subsidiary agencies which are active in the acquisition area,
including Wolf Aolins (an international brand consultancy) in May 2001, Allyn &
Company (an independent public relations firm in Texas) in January 2002, and
Aaron Walton Entertainment (Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing
agency) in April 2002.
With the merger and acquisitions, Omnicom Group functions as the parent
company for three separate and prestigious agency networks – BBDO Worldwide,
DDB Worldwide and TBWA Worldwide – as well as many independent leading
US-based national advertising agencies such as Goodby, Arnell, Zimmerman
Partners and GSD&M, and also the marketing services network, Diversified
Agency Services (DAS). Through DAS, Omnicom Group provides services in
direct marketing, promotional marketing, public relations and specialty
communications. DAS includes RAPP, the leading direct marketing agency, and
Fleishman-Hillard, among the worldÊs largest public relations firm
(www.omnicom.com).
ACTIVITY 8.1
Omnicom Group Inc consists of three top global advertising agencies,
BBDO, DDB and TBWA. Each has its own valuable clients around the
world. Find information on each of them and discuss the following:
(a) History;
(b) Clients; and
(c) Recognition/Awards received.
Omnicom Group Inc also manages Omnicom Media Group (OMG) that was
formed out of the media department of its three global advertising agencies. OMG
comprises three full service media companies, namely PHD Network, OMD
Worldwide and Prometheus. Under this group there are media specialist
companies in branded entertainment, print, outdoor, etc.
About 60% of its advertising revenues come from TBWA International and
Goodby, DDB Needham Worldwide, BBDO Worldwide; while 40% of its revenue
comes from its specialty advertising and marketing service companies
(www.fundinguniverse.com).
Its three global agency networks all rank in the top 10 global advertising agencies
and receive many high-status awards. In 1996, BBDO was recognised as "The
Most Creative Agency Network" by Advertising Age International. In the 1996
Cannes International Advertising Festival, DDB Needham garnered the most
awards.
In 1996, TBWA opened new offices in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and China),
Latin America (Brazil, Chile and Argentina), South Africa and Europe (Warsaw,
Munich, Berlin and Cyprus) (www.fundinguniverse.com).
WPP bought out JWT Group Inc., a media advertising agency in financial trouble
in June 1987. That buyout included Hill & Knowlton Inc, the public relations
giant, and several satellite firms. In 1989, it acquired the Ogilvy Group for
USD864 million and built an alliance with Asatsu-DK In of Japan in 1998. WPP
entered the new millennium focused on expansion and getting another attention
with bids of USD630 million for the Tempus Group. It purchased Young &
Rubicam (Y&R) in 2000 in a USD4.7 billion acquisition to form the worldÊs largest
advertising and services group. With Y&R and Tempus, its marketing services
increased to 65% of total incomes.
In 2008, Y&R became the fourth largest US advertising agency with 16,000
employees in 186 offices all over the world. It offers a wide range of advertising,
media, and communication services as well as the controlled public relations
giant Burson-Marsteller. This agency utilised a number of globally-based video-
conferencing site for its management and clients. It also has a major global
marketing subsidiary called Wunderman, which takes a technology focus in
order to assist clients with e-commerce and internet-based marketing needs and
solutions. The group is thus moving into new areas such as Internet, data mining,
behaviour modelling and customer retention work.
The group has managed its portfolio of investments and acquisitions through
WPP. DigitalWPP has won global HSBC and Samsung accounts, the prestigious
account Dell, IBM, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle and Unilever.
ACTIVITY 8.2
ACTIVITY 8.3
As one of the leading global advertising agency, IPG has a large number
of customers comprising major companies and famous brands. List the
major clients of IPG.
IPG is the parent company of advertising agency McCann Erickson and media
company, Universal McCann. It has offices in more than 100 countries. The
group operates in two main business segments as follows (www.wikinvest.com):
Even though IPG was created in the early 1960s with an association of two
agencies, McCann Erikson Worldwide and McCann-Markshalk, the history
goes back over 100 years. It was first incorporated in 1930 under the name of
McCann-Erickson Incorporated, succeeding the advertising agency started by A.
W. Erikson and in 1911 by Harrison K. McCann (Gralpois, 2010). IPG then added
on 38 agencies, communications companies and PR firms by 1966.
IPG has been a client-centric organisation since its beginning. The companyÊs
mission has been to develop client trade and brands, with a particular
emphasis on constructing global brands through local and synchronised
marketing programmes. This holding company is among the top five advertising
conglomerates by revenue in the world. It has three global advertising agencies,
namely Draftfcb, McCann Worldgroup and Lowe and Partners as well as full-
services US agencies (such as Deutsch, Campbell Mithun and The Martin Agency
and Mullen). Figure 8.2 shows IPGÊs revenue and net income while Figure 8.3
shows IPGÊs revenue by geographic area.
*HDY refers to the total non-consolidated net sales of hakuhodo, daiko advertising and
yomiuri advertising.
DentsuÊs roots dated back to 1901 when Hoshiri Mitsunaga founded the
Telegraphic Service Company. In 1936, Dentsu reinvented itself as a specialised
advertising agency. By 1959, Dentsu began its international spreading out by
establishing offices and subsidiaries in New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Taipei
and Beijing. Dentsu joined with Young & Rubicam to become a joint venture firm
for several major accounts. It continued to expand globally. Dentsu then shifted
toward Asia by expanding and buying out Asian advertising agencies.
ACTIVITY 8.4
With „Good Innovation‰ as its corporate philosophy, Dentsu provides a
diverse range of services including the following:
(a) Strategic solutions;
(b) Communication design;
(c) Creative sphere;
(d) Promotions;
(e) Digital;
(f) Media content; and
(g) Social solutions.
Now the Internet is fully integrated into DentsuÊs offering and bundled together
with other media. According to Sugiyama and Adree (2010), the approach not
only improved services for clients, but also created accountability.
Publicis was founded in 1926 by a 20-year old French advertising pioneer, Marcel
Bleustein-Blanchet. After opening a New York office in 1957, through a merger
and strategic alliance with Foote, Cone and Belding in 1988, Publicis entered the
US market and grew beyond Europe in the mid-1990s with purchases of shares in
main agencies in Asia, Latin America, and Canada. About 59% of the companyÊs
revenue were generated in Europe, excluding France. In 1999, Publicis bought
49% of Burell Communications, a large advertising agency specialising in the
African American market which has several major clients including Coca-cola,
McDonaldÊs and Sears.
Publicis Group was formed in 2000 when Publicis, the Paris-based agency,
acquired Saatchi & Saatchi, the international holding company that has
operations in advertising, marketing and communications and employs 6000
workers for USD1.7 billion. Its namesake has about 150 offices and serves global
clients such as Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and General Mills. The group then
merged with Bcom3 Group under the leadership of Maurice Levy as CEO. It also
formed a strategic partnership with Dentsu, JapanÊs largest group, in order to
strengthen its global reach in Asia. Figure 8.5 shows PublicisÊ key figures in 2011.
Overall, with „Viva La Difference‰ as its slogan, Publicis Group now includes the
following (Plunkett, 2007):
(a) Three global advertising networks – Publicis, Leo Burnett and Saatchi &
Saatchi;
(b) Two multi-hub networks – Barthe Bogie Hegarty and Fallon Worldwide;
(c) Regional agencies – Beacon Communications (Tokyo), Kaplan Thaler
Group (New York) and Marcel (Paris); and
(d) Two global media consultancy and buying networks – ZenithOptimedia
and Starcom MediaVest Group.
With the prime objective to becoming a leader in the digital sector, the group has
acquired Digitas (the fourth largest marketing services agency in US and the
third largest interactive agency at the time) in December 2006, and Rzarfish from
MicrosoftÊs prior acquisition of aQuantive, to improve its digital capabilities since
Internet-based advertising is increasing. Under the Publicis GroupÊs Vivaki pole,
it built up a technological platform supported by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and
AOL that recommends advertisers the possibility to aim particularly defined
audiences in a single campaign with various networks.
Based on its website (www.havas.com), Havas operates through its two business
units, namely:
Major advertising agencies are based on the core nations, such as Omnicom,
WPP, IPG and Dentsu Inc.
Firth, K. T., & Mueller, B. (2010). Advertising and societies: Global issues. US: Peter
Lang.
Gotemba, G., & Iwamoto, Y. (2006). Japan on the upswing: Why the bubble burst
and JapanÊs economic renewal. US: Algora Publishing.
Omnicom Group Inc., WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Companies, Dentsu Inc,
Havas, Publicis Group Websites. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.havas.com.
Sugiyama, K., & Andree T. (2010). The Dentsu way. London: McGraw-Hill
Professional.
www.dentsu.com
www.interpublic.com
www.wpp.com
INTRODUCTION
The advent of information and communication technology helps the easier flow
of information. The world has indeed become a global village as predicted by
Marshall McLuhan.
With the existence of satellite parabolas or dishes, the emergence of the Internet,
broadband, wireless, fibre optic cables, and mobile telephony, the transmission of
contents rely heavily on the efficiency of telecommunications infrastructure.
Therefore, every nation, especially the metropolis nations, needs good
telecommunication systems to ensure effective communication and efficient
access and distribution of information.
Global telecommunication systems are the central nervous system of the global
economy. Hence, an internationally functioning technical transmission system or
infrastructure is required.
In this topic, you will be exposed to selected major players in the global
telecommunication infrastructure. The discussion focuses on the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU), a global telecommunication agency under the
United Nation (UN). We will also focus on International Telecommunications
Satellite Organisation (INTELSAT) and other players that are also responsible to
the global telecommunications system.
ACTIVITY 9.1
As an international agency under UN, ITU plays the role of a platform for
international meets and exhibitions and serves as a forum for bringing together
officials from both the government and private telecommunications and the
Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry to share ideas, know-
how, and technology. It convenes major global conferences to monitor global
technical standards as well as issues impacting on the telecommunications
businesses. However, it sometimes becomes a battlefield between core and
peripheral nations, especially regarding the New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO).
Nowadays, all core nations have the latest in communication technologies whereas
the peripheral nations have less. Therefore, the main objective of the ITU is to close
the „digital divide‰ between the metropolis and peripheral nations.
The advent of wireless telegraphy in 1896 and the utilisation of such technology
for maritime purposes, led to the International Radiotelegraph Conference which
was convened in 1906 in Berlin. It led to the introduction of radio regulations.
At the 1932 Madrid Conference, the Union decided to combine the International
Telegraph Convention of 1865 and the International Radiotelegraph Convention
of 1906 to form the International Telecommunication Convention. In 1956, the
CCIT and the CCIF were merged to form the International Telephone and
Telegraph Consultative Committee (CCITT), in order to respond more effectively
to the requirements generated by the development of these two types of
communication.
In 1959, CCIR set up a study group responsible for studying space radio
communication as a way to meet the challenges of new space communications
systems. The introduction of space telecommunication systems necessitated the
improvement of procedures.
ITU became the major agency in organising the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) that aim to close the digital gaps. WSIS became the
body to ensure a people-centred development-oriented Information Society
(www.itu.nt).
(a) There would be other global meetings sponsored by the ITU at which they
could state their case and make gains in their movement towards a fairer
share of the radio spectrum and orbital parking spaces;
(b) Pressure applied by many nations, particularly the US, to ensure that an
orderly spectrum remained intact, especially satellites;
(c) Almost all nations want to see their domestic system continue operating
without major adjustments; and
(d) Divergent and conflicting interests among peripheral nations prevent the
formation of a powerful and united voting block that could present
resolutions and amendment demanding radical changes in ITU.
To reduce criticism from peripheral nations, the ITU responded with the
establishment of the Independent Commission for Worldwide Telecommunications
Development: The Missing Link, better known as the Maitland Commission
chaired by Sir Donald Maitland during the 1980s. The report published by ITU in
1985 addressed the inequities in the distribution of telecommunication systems
and services between developed countries and other nations.
For instance, the report indicated that 96% of the distribution of global telephones
is in high-income or upper-middle income countries as shown in Figure 9.1. It
showed that two-thirds of the global population do not have telephone services. In
the majority of the developing countries, services are below the global standard
and the latest models of telecommunications are not available, with the exception
of the larger towns and commercial meeting points.
Based on the commission, the causes of this inequality are due to various reasons,
including disparities in economic ability, past abilities, and different priorities
given to investment in telecommunication between both groups. In the developed
or industrialised countries, individuals enjoy the use of more than one telephone
per two people. All businesses and the majority of households are already „on the
telephone‰. Customers expect a high quality of service and when faults occur, the
management of the network is heavily criticised. Furthermore, telecommunication
is truly the central nervous system of the emerging information society.
That imbalance should be removed to gain the benefits from the importance of the
telecommunication system:
Given the vital role telecommunications play not only in such obvious fields
as emergency, health and other social services, administration and commerce,
but also in stimulating economic growth and enhancing the quality of life,
creating effective networks worldwide which will bring immense benefits. An
increase in international traffic will generate funds which could be devoted to
the further improvement and development of telecommunications services.
The increased flow of trade and information will contribute to better
international relationships. The process of creating effective networks
worldwide will provide new markets for high technology and other
industries⁄
ACTIVITY 9.2
Based on the Maitland Commission there are big gaps in the digital
divide between industrialised countries and developing countries. How
about now, more than 20 years after the report was published? Do you
think the situation has changed?
Read the report „Twenty Years of Measuring The Missing Link‰ from
the ITU website (http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/sfo/missinglink/kelly-
20-years.pdf) and discuss it.
Nowadays, ICTs are becoming crucial tools for economic and social
development. As a matter of fact, the Internet is now seen as the main technology
for all needs. Therefore, access to broadband should now be a basic requirement
just like what electricity or roads used to be then. Having access to the Internet
should now be the right of every citizen.
Developing countries now enjoy their voting status at ITU and do not want to see
it weakened by adding private sector voting rights. These countries are
concerned that private sector voting rights would go to multinational corporations
based on the developed countries like USA, Europe or Japan. The marginal
voices of developing countries could decrease if ITU fulfils the private sector
demand. However, if ITU fails to respond, many major ICT players could shift
their interests, role and advice to other regional groups.
At the same time, ITU realises that reform is needed. In its Strategic Plan for
2008–2011, ITUÊs major planning document recognises the crucial role that they
should play within the broader context of the global economy. It realised the
challenges on the ICT and telecommunication current trends and tried to
reposition itself in the international telecommunications debate. ITU attempts
to solve the digital gap problems by organising the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) as a global forum with a pledge for building a
people-centred development-oriented Information Society. This is followed by
the initiation of the WSIS Stocktaking process in 2004. The purpose is to provide
a register of activities carried out by governments, international organisations,
the business sector, civil society and other entities, in order to highlight the
progress made since that landmark event.
Starting from a single satellite after the launch of Intelsat I in 1965, the Intelsat
system has grown to a global network using many satellites. As of March 2011,
Intelsat operates a fleet of 52 communication satellites with their corporate
headquarters in Luxemburg, and it is the leading provider of satellite services
worldwide. With the aim of aiding the global community, Intelsat is the crucial
tool in many international organisations, such as the Red Cross and World Vision
which continue in their service for the good of humanity across the world.
Controlled and owned by 144 member nations, this organisation has been
disseminating information and entertainment programmes for most of the
international media houses and their sister companies, the Internet Service
Providers, and governmental bodies. IntelsatÊs central unit feed into the worldÊs
network of fixed satellites, teleport, and fibre infrastructure network. Therefore,
IntelsatÊs nerve centre supplies the support and strength needed for national,
regional and global communications.
Early Bird (also known as Intelsat I) was put into regular commercial service in
1965, and thereafter contracted for manufacture and launch of dozens of
satellites.
do not have the built-in one half second delay of GSO satellite calls and have
virtually no distortion. In addition, signals sent over fibre optic lines are almost
impossible to intercept. The competition has been described by IntelsatÊs Director
General as follows:
Global fibre-optic capacity has doubled each year for the past five years. Over
the next five years, it is expected to double again⁄ [A]s a result of the growth
in fibre-optic capability, the migration from satellite to fibre on high-density
routes has significantly reduced IntelsatÊs growth in telephony services. Some
of the customers migrating to fibre-optic cables are members of IntelsatÊs own
close group of customers (namely signatories) who are often investors and
developers of cable networks.
(Bender, 1998)
According to McPhail (2011), these two competing groups service those routes
that provide considerable profitability. They do not serve the undeveloped
nations, less populated areas, or low-profit tracks where there is little interest for
high-capacity and high-speed digital communication. However, Intelsat is the
lifeline provider for universal access to satellite service and this satellite operator
has a strong chance to dominate the North American market and becoming a
stronger contender on the global scene after its merger with PanAmSat.
ACTIVITY 9.3
Besides Intelsat, there are other satellite providers as listed below. With
a partner, find information about these satellite providers:
(a) Eutelsat;
(b) Immarsat;
(c) Intersputnik; and
(d) SES S.A.
WTO officially commenced and succeeded GATT in January 1995 under the
Marrakech Agreement. As the only global international organisation dealing
with the rules of trade between nations, it is formed to promote international
trade by introducing a procedure for formalising trade agreements and providing
a framework to solve disagreements between nations. With 155 member countries,
of which 117 are developing countries, WTO activities are administered by a
Secretariat of some 700 employees based in Geneva, Switzerland under the
management of the WTO Director-General.
The WTO roles and influence become more important as global trade increases,
including a substantial number of mergers and acquisitions internationally in the
communications sector. However, there are controversies in the roles played by
the WTO.
On the other hand, considering that some countries have more powerful
cultural industries than others, arguments may be put forward that in the
cultural sector open market may lead to cultural standardisation if member
states cannot adopt and maintain cultural policies to preserve their cultural
expressions.
(Hanania, n.d)
However, the US insists that media products such as films, books and magazines
may be considered as any other manufactured product. This goes against the
national interests in a number of countries because they view these cultural
products as central to their history, national identity, language and culture.
Therefore, some parties have threatened to walk out from GATT negotiations
and want to defend their right to exclude cultural industries and products from
the negotiation.
ACTIVITY 9.4
Some parties see it as being needed now, especially with the expansion of the
global communication corporation; the ability to reward and determine
ownership of creative works is becoming more problematic. However, a
professor of economics and law in Colombia University, Jagdish Bhagwati
asserts that intellectual property does not belong to the WTO, since protecting it
is simply a matter of royalty collection.
The roots of OECD came from the Organisation for European Economic
Cooperation (OEEC) after World War II with the determination to avoid the
mistakes in World War I. The European leaders realised that the best way to
ensure peace is to encourage co-operation and reconstruction, not punish the
defeated. The OECD was formed by 20 nations in Europe and North America on
30 September 1961 after OEEC members signed the new OECD Convention.
The OECD has been accused of favouring the richer nations. It also has been
criticised on the draft Multilateral Agreement on Investment because it has been
seen as threatening the quality of protection of human rights, labour and the
environment.
Apart from publishing between 300 to 500 books each year mostly in English and
French, OECD also releases the biennial OECD Communication Outlook and
OECD Information Technology Outlook. The content of such publications are
status reports, forecasts and analysis of comparisons between countries.
ACTIVITY 9.5
Try to get the OECD Communications Outlook 2011 from the official
OECD website and read about the telecommunication market size,
network development and the Internet infrastructure. Then answer the
questions below.
(a) Compare the data and the findings to the Malaysian context.
(b) What do you think about Malaysian ICT development based on
the comparison that you have done?
(c) In your opinion, what should we do to foster competition and
innovation in this sector?
ITU is a UN agency with 144 member nations that plays the role of a platform
for worldwide and regional exhibitions and forum in bringing together
representatives of government and the telecommunications and ICT industry
to exchange ideas, knowledge and technology.
The WTO roles are more important as global trade increases, including the
communications sector.
OECD uses its wealth of information on a broad range of topics to help ensure
the environmental implications of economic and social development are taken
into consideration. OECD publications are the prime vehicle for disseminating
its research output.
Bender, R. (1998). Launching and operating satellites: legal issues. US: Wolters
Kluwer. [Part IV: Competition on satellite Operation]
INTRODUCTION
This final topic will focus on the Internet and its usage in the new information
and communication technology era. You will be exposed to the history of this
new media and its impact on the media and communication industry.
The emergence of the Internet has changed the face of mass communication. This
new media technology disseminates a wide range of information and has created
a virtual reality environment.
The Internet presents various types of content, from news to entertainment and
from general information to the very personal. The Internet is regarded as the
backbone of mediated communication now (Chafee & Metzger, 2001).
ACTIVITY 10.1
Prior to the Web, the Internet was only a massive interconnected network of
computers. It was text-oriented, black and white, and image free. It was used
primarily by large corporations and research institutes to share information. With
the introduction of the Web, millions of Internet users have turned it into a
repository of information.
From 1991 to 1993, Berners-Lee continued to turn the Web into a highly
functional entity. He began to make plans for a web page and coordinated
recommendations of users on the Internet. In 1992, research organisations in the
Netherlands, Germany and the US became committed to the Web.
The words „Internet‰ and „World Wide Web‰ have been used every day without
much distinction even though they are not the same. The Internet is a global
system of interconnected computer networks while the Web is one of the services
that run on the Internet. Table 10.1 gives a variety of definitions of the Web.
It is called the Web because every single page can be linked to allow readers to
read from one page to another. The Web can be regarded as a medium for
publishing any information on the Internet. Christian (2000) distinguished the
Web from other publishing media by highlighting that it is a:
(a) Multimedia system;
(b) Hypertext system;
(c) Public access system;
(d) Searchable system;
(e) Distributed system; and
(f) Dynamic system.
The rapid growth of the Web is the result of many innovative advances in Web
technology. The Web is now widely used to disseminate information in various
fields including business and for marketing purposes. Many companies have
developed their own websites to compete in an increasingly competitive market.
The birth of the Internet has facilitated the communication process in various
fields such as education, entertainment and business, to either convey or obtain
information. Regardless of distance, time and place, information can be
disseminated to a wider audience immediately.
ACTIVITY 10.2
Source: www.courses.psu.edu
Figure 10.1: Internet timeline
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn are regarded as
effective networking tools since these help people to re-establish contact with
friends they have not spoken to in years or build a network of contacts for
business purposes easily. Apart from that, individuals can keep friends and
families updated on what is going on in their lives without having to contact
them individually.
(a) With the Internet, everyone with a modem, a computer and a telephone line
can be connected and not only receive but also produce information; and
(b) The Internet has not only changed the distribution of images but also of
printed documents.
According to McPhail (2010), news editors, pundits and politicians can no longer
act as gatekeepers who control, revise, twist or limit information in the news.
With the emergence of social media, there is an explosion of user-generated
content. The Internet is constantly provided with new personalised content
through websites, blogs and online forums that allow everyone to get
information faster and freer. The global public is therefore better informed. They
are like the public jury, armed with information concerning major political and
other issues.
This new media is used as a political tool by political groups to gain support
from the public or to carry out their mission. This has led to the rise of Internet
activism such as demonstrated in the Arab Spring. The impact can be seen in
Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and other parts of the Arab world where Facebook and
Twitter were used as tools of modern democracy to speak up on issues and unify
the community. For example, the Myanmar government received pressure not
only from the international community but also from their citizens.
Even though the exposure of private, secret and classified documents, such as
by Wikileaks, was rather shocking, it was an example of cyberfreedom and
democratisation. However, it also shows that the Internet does not have privacy.
Everything is open.
ACTIVITY 10.3
We have the option of watching live video via the Internet. However, this can
cause problems particularly in terms of copyright because the copyright holders
might not realise that their products have been circulated without their
permission. Copyright law gives moral and economic rights to the producer or
publisher for their works. The law prohibits any irresponsible party from
copying, producing or distributing the works for commercial purposes.
The convergence of television and the Internet have led to the birth of global
television. There are arguments that the Internet site has infringed copyright laws
and incurred trademark infringement. As an example, the US-based National
Football League decided that legal action became necessary because US Internet
users were watching the NFL games through station repeats on the iCraveTV
Internet site (McPhail, 2010).
Generally, HollywoodÊs main studios will release their films within the US first
and later around the world, to Western nations and then audiences in the South-
South countries. The distribution takes months and maybe a year to be viewed
by audiences in smaller nations like Eastern Europe.
With the advent of new media technologies, the global entertainment market can
obtain information about newly released Hollywood films quickly via some
websites. With various methods such as FTP, e-mail and P2P, many videos can
be searched and downloaded within the US. Some consumers can just purchase
the films through online shops or e-commerce businesses that focus in film
distribution, primarily DVD disk technology. Therefore, there is a need for the
film industry to re-examine its global distribution policy because of the Internet.
The Internet usage shows a significant upward trend and that the new media is
increasingly being used. In fact, it has become a necessity for some people.
Besides being a source of reference or „library‰ for all forms of information and
knowledge, this medium is a tool for effective communication. The Internet is a
new dimension of communication that has changed the way people
communicate (St Amant & Zemliansky, 2004; Anja, 2004).
From electronic mail (e-mail) to the bulletin boards, Internet Relay Chat,
multiuser domains and the Web, the Internet has become a popular
communication tool among us. With this technology, communication with
family, friends, business partners, government organisations, non-governmental
organisations or individuals can be done easily without limitations of distance,
area or time.
ACTIVITY 10.4
Gender:
Male 59.6%
Female 40.4%
Education:
School until age 16 2.0%
School until age 18 12.5%
Trade/technical school/college 23.2%
University 50.3%
Postgraduate 11.9%
Employment Status:
Full-time workers 58.8%
Part-time workers 6.3%
Freelancer 5.1%
Self-employed 4.8%
Full-time parent 3.2%
In education 13.5%
Unemployed 3.1%
Other 5.2%
The report released by Nielsen indicated that Internet access through mobile
phones and desktop computers by Malaysian households are the same, namely,
77%, down only 2% compared to laptop computers while 18% involved the use
of tablets. This is quite different in Indonesia, which recorded the highest
percentage of mobile phone use, which is 78% compared to desktop computers
(31%) and laptops (29%). This is because Indonesia is the third largest mobile
market in Asia Pacific after China and India.
According to Guan (2008), a total of 456 million users in Asia, which is one-third
of the worldÊs population online, engage in social media activities. In Singapore,
for example, the favourite activities are blogging, social networking and online
forums, while in Malaysia, an estimated 11 million users of social media are said
to use this medium to voice their opinions in blogs and interact in social sites like
Facebook and Malaysiakini. Consumers in Thailand are more attracted to citizen-
journalism, or any form of sharing news, while in Indonesia, most are using
instant messaging and electronic mail to communicate and interact in cyberspace.
Many of us sometimes use the terms „virus‰, „worm‰ and „Trojan horse‰
interchangeably. Though all are malicious programmes that can cause damage to
computers, there are differences between the three – whether one requires host
programmes and/or makes copies of itself. A worm is software designed to
propagate and perhaps destroy or modify files and multiply itself automatically
to other computers through networks while a Trojan horse is a programme that
appears harmless but hides malicious functions (Stang, 1992). All three can harm
a computers systemÊs data or performance (see Table 10.5).
The number of viruses which account for the majority of infections is growing
each year: some gained in commonness while some lost ground. From 1989 to
1991, the US experienced a growth in the diversity of infections. The Stoned virus
became more common, moving from 8% of all infections to 42%; Jerusalem-B
became relatively less prevalent, shifting from 62% of infections to 32% (Stang,
1992). According to Gery Menegaz in ZDNet, the top five worst computer viruses
are Mellisa, the Anna Kournikova Virus, MyDoom, Sasser & Netsky, and 2007
Strom Worm.
The virus infections can cause great problems particularly to major corporations
because of their potential to free protected data, wipe out data, modify data or
freeze or take over computer systems. There are said to be over 100 new viruses
per week (McPhail, 2010). With the widespread Internet usage and e-commerce
as daily routines for many people, the impact of viruses is worrisome. It can
cause the loss of millions of dollars in time and business.
10.8 BLOGGING
Blogging involves not only individuals but also companies, organisations, media
and others. Blogging is the easiest way to present ourselves to the Web and make
our voices heard, acknowledged as well as responded to by those interested. It
can be regarded as a new and future platform for instant publishing and personal
publishing. It has changed the concept of publishing in traditional media.
Usually the media are the ones which identify the news; companies are the ones
that sell products; publishers produce books; recording firms produce cassettes
or CDs; and we as consumers can make a choice to purchase them. To get our
printed materials accepted and published by traditional media is quite
challenging. In print publishing such as newspaper reports, articles, novels or
textbooks, the author is not in charge of how the text will look.
The idea of blogging came in the late 1980s when some people learned how to
post contents using a certain network. However, it was only in the late 1990s
when the word „weblog‰ was used and the word „blog‰ became popular among
the public. The usage of blogs exploded in 1999 and became popularised by the
arrival of early blog hosting sites such as Open Diary, Live Journal and Blogger.
A personal website that is always updated with news, headlines, opinions and
commentary, and which also provide links and/or diary entries, generally
organised chronologically. A weblog is recognised as a weblog in the sense
that it is organised chronologically and designed for short, frequent updates.
The modern blog evolved from the online diaries of individuals that are used
daily to keep a running activity of their personal lives. The content in a blog is
displayed in date order, with the most recent information at the top of the page.
Therefore, an actively maintained blog will develop and grow from day to day
with the support of its avid followers or readers. Among the popular blog hosts
are Blogger, WordPress and Moveable Type.
Generally, a person who posts these entries is called a blogger. However, they
can also be called diarists, journalists or journallers. Many blogs provide
commentaries, which make it different from the ordinary or static website. This
makes the blog a part of interactive media that allows guests to leave comments
and messages.
SELF-CHECK 10.1
The blogging phenomenon has changed the Internet whereby anybody can use it
to post thoughts and opinions. Personal webpages can be linked to other online
pages – especially the blogroll, permalink and trackback. This, along with blog
search engines, allows users to keep track of blog threads that connect them to
other people with similar interests.
Blogs can influence people on certain events or issues that might not be covered
fully in the mainstream media like the Rathergate scandal where Dan Rather, the
television journalist, presented a view that conflicted with the accepted version of
President BushÊs military service record. This gave greater reliability to blogs as a
tool of news spreading. Even though it is often seen as follower gossips, bloggers
sometimes direct the way information is disseminated to the public, unlike the
traditional media that is directly influenced by the media ownerÊs decision.
Therefore, some said, blogging has reshaped the look of journalism and has also
been called „online journalism‰.
Dramatic growth in Internet usage in the 1990s was due to the development
of the World Wide Web.
The Internet has made the world a lot smaller because it enables someone in
any part of the world to communicate with people from other countries.
Regardless of its benefits, the growth in the Internet usage is a cause for
concern with increasing activities of copyright infringement and the
emergence of computer viruses that may affect the industry.
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Communication & Society, 4(4), 365–379.
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OR
Thank you.