Broadcast groups

During the late 1970s a handful of broadcasters accounted for most audiences in each country. In the US for example the three networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - garnered around 92% of US television viewers, a figure that had been stable for around twenty five years. The four networks in Australia (three commercial, one government-owned) had a similar market share.

At around that time US visionary (and cable television czar) John Malone envisaged a "five hundred channel universe". That vision is slowly coming true but it seems increasingly clear that while the channels may be delivered in any number of ways - by cable, by satellite, by microwave, via the net - much of the broadcast content will be sourced from existing media groups. Contrary to the utopian fantasies of pundits such as Barlow, Gilder and Negroponte, it's business as usual in the 'age of the internet'.

In the US, for example, the prime time audience of the big 3 television networks dropped from 74% in 1983 to 53% in 1996 because of competition from cable networks and new broadcast networks such as News' Fox and Viacom's UPN. However, they were permitted to enter the entertainment program production-syndication markets (and to acquire or be acquired by film studios) and own more stations, particularly useful as the value of the market grew. None of the individual cable networks gathered more than a 2% share of the nationwide television audience

     Statistics

Peter Lyman & Hal Varian's 2000 study How Much Information suggests that there are around 43 800 active radio stations in the world (16 500 AM, 26 000 FM stations and 1 500 shortwave stations). 12 615 radio stations were located in the US. The owner of the largest number of stations appears to be the US Clear network, with around 1 200 stations in North America and other regions (including Australia).

Contrary to claims that radio is dead or nobody's listening, some 6 108 new stations have started in US since 1970 and the average listener hears around 1 100 hours per year. As of the end of 2000 there were around 4 500 streaming radio stations on the net, with 2 786 in North America, 970 in Europe, 109 in Asia, 16 in Africa and 235 in Oceania.

The 2000 CIA World Factbook claims that there are 33 071 television stations across the globe, responsible for around 193 million hours of television programming per year. In 1999 there were 1 616 broadcast stations in the US and 260 coast to coast cable networks and 54 regional networks operating on around 10 500 cable systems

     Structure

Ownership restrictions (nationality, sectoral dominance and multi-sectoral activity) during most of the past century prevented the growth of substantial multinational broadcasting groups, in contrast to the regimes for film, music and print. Those restrictions began to break down from the 1970s onwards.

Most advanced economies have seen the growth of large-scale national broadcasting networks, as distinct from past affiliate arrangements. In the US groups such as Clear, AOL Time Warner, Cox, Disney, Viacom and News have acquired existing cable and terrestrial networks (eg CBS, Infinity and ABC) and/or started their own (News' Fox, Viacom's UPN).

In Australia groups such as DMG and APN (both overseas owned) have achieved a concentration in radio rivalling that of print counterparts, while CanWest has added Hollinger's newspaper chain to its Canadian and Australian television networks. In Italy Berlusconi has grabbed a 45% audience share and over 60% of total advertising sales. Public sector broadcasters such as the BBC, ABC and CBC have largely retained their (small) market share but proved less successful in coping with demands for quality and greater audience numbers.

Globally the major groups are operating through substantial but minority stakes in other broadcasters and through selling content. The dominant business model assumes that ownership of the 'pipe' is primarily important for assuring that you can continue to distribute programming sourced from your operation in another country.

     Perspectives

The separate Revolutions profile highlights writing about the television and radio broadcasting industry and their impact.

In addition to studies highlighted elsewhere on the site we recommend the following works for insights into the broadcasting business. Particular studies are included in accounts of specific media groups.

Bruce Owen's The Internet Challenge To Television (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 99), more sensible than George Gilder's millenarian Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionise Our World (New York: Free Press 00) and Life After Television (New York: Norton 92)

Trevor Barr's Newmedia.com.au: The Changing Face of Australia's Media & Communications (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 00) and Jock Given's lucid The Death of Broadcasting: Media's Digital Future (Sydney: Uni of NSW Press 98)

Bruce Wasserstein's Big Deal (New York: Warner 98), Ken Auletta's Three Blind Mice: How The Television Networks Lost Their Way (New York: Random House 91), Vertical Integration in Cable Television (Cambridge: MIT Press 97) by David Waterman & Andrew Weiss and Mark Westfield's The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale: Pluto Press 00)

Harold Vogel's Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 96) and Global Television & Film: An Introduction to the Economics of the Business (Oxford: Clarendon Press 98) by Stuart McFadyen, Colin Hoskins & Adam Finn

Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 96) by Thomas Streeter and Robert Toll's The Entertainment Machine: American Show Business in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Oxford Uni Press 82)

     Sport

There's significant literature on the interaction between professional sports and broadcasting, in particular television. Some highlights are -

Gerald Scully's The Business of Major League Baseball (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 89)

Richard Giulianotti's Football ­ A Sociology of the Global Game (Cambridge: Polity Press 99)

Sport in America: From Wicked Amusement to National Obsession (Champaign: Human Kinetics 95)edited by David Wiggins

Benjamin Rader's In Its Own Image: How Television has Transformed Sport (New York: Free Press 84) and Joan Chandler's Television and National Sport: The United States and Britain (Urbana: Uni of Illinois Press 88)

Sports for Sale: Television, Money & the Fans (New York: Oxford Uni Press 88) by David Klatell & Norman Marcus

Gary Whannel's Fields in Vision: Television Sport & Cultural Transformation (London: Routledge 92) and Power Play: Sport, the Media & Popular Culture (Harlow: Longman 00) by Raymond Boyle & Richard Haynes

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