Describing ownership

and structure of the

media sector
Jack O’Hara
Types of ownership

• Private
• Public
• Independent
• Conglomerate
Private ownership

Private ownership refers to companies that are privately

owned, meaning they will be funded by mostly advertising
different products through their medium. An example of a
privately owned media property is ‘SKY TV’.
The advantage of running a media property privately is that it
is mostly funded through advertising. Television
advertisements are one of the most profitable types of
advertising after web advertisements and the more popular a
TV channel is, the more they can charge for advertisements.
Sky TV is one of the biggest television channels and providers
in the United Kingdom, too.
The disadvantage of running a privately owned media
property are that they are less likely to care about catering to
their viewers because they have so many people to cater
towards, whereas public and independent media properties
can hone in on what their viewer base likes.
Public ownership

Public ownership media properties are funded by the

government, which inherently is funded by the general public,
through television licences. Because of this, the public has
more of an influence on public ownership media properties
than those that are privately owned. An example of this
would be the BBC.
The advantage of a public media property is that the public
has a say in what the media company broadcasts because our
funding is what keeps the company afloat.
The disadvantage of a public media property is that because
they are funded by the general public, they cannot advertise
anything on their channel, meaning they are potentially
missing out on a lot of money in favour of keeping their
integrity. However, the viewers of these public media
properties could argue that this is also an advantage.
Independent ownership

Independent ownership companies operate without any

funding from external sources at all. They make products with
the money they put into the company and then make new
products with the money they made from the first product.
An example of an independently owned media company is
‘A24 films’.
The advantage of independently owning your own media
company is the fact that you have full creative control over all
of the products. Everything will be how you want it to be
because you have made it the way you want. Nobody can tell
you what to do with the things you create.
The disadvantage of independently owning your own media
company is the fact that your income is solely based off of
how well your products do. If they don’t preform as expected,
you could end up losing money because of it.
Conglomerate ownership

Conglomerate companies are companies that own many

other smaller media companies throughout different media
sectors. There is no limit to how many companies or how
many sectors a conglomerate company can take control of as
long as they have the funds to do it. An example of a
conglomerate company would be Disney.
The advantages of a conglomerate ownership would be the
fact that they have media in almost every sector imaginable,
spreading their message and getting revenue from it, too.
There are very little disadvantages to a conglomerate
ownership for the owner of the conglomerate company.
However, for the rest of the industry, it means that there will
be less room for small independently owned companies to do
well because the market will be saturated by conglomerate
ownerships.
Structure of the Media
Sector

This chart describes the structure of a typical media company.

At the top are the owners of the company. These are the
different share holders and investors of the company. After
the owner comes the exhibitors. They are the ones who make
the informed decisions on what products will be a good idea
to make based off of profitability and relevancy in the current
market. After exhibitors come the distributors. Their job is to
make a deal with the exhibitors that will then go on to the
CEO of the company to make the final decision on what
products get made, the schedules that they happen on and
the budget they are allocated for the products. Once an
agreement is made, the Head of Production will begin their
role of making the product come to life. The day to day
workers are the people that will do most of the technical work
on the product to make it happen in the way that the
exhibitors imagined.