Organizational Change in the Global Media Markets

Diplomarbeit von Dominik Dreyer

Abstract:

The global media industry has been subject to radical changes in its structure in recent years. International media companies have reached a dominant position in the global media markets through an enormous wave of mergers. Since the year 2000 the three biggest ever media mergers have taken place. AOL merged with Time Warner, Vivendi agreed on a merger with the Seagram Company and Canal+ and Viacom acquired the CBS Corporation. In 2001 the six biggest media conglomerates - AOL Time Warner, Walt Disney, Vivendi Universal, Viacom, Bertelsmann and News Corporation - alone generated revenues of $160 billion in comparison to aggregate revenues of $415 billion obtained by the Top 50 media companies.

This development was triggered by radical changes in the US - Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) regulation policy. Though it is the change in the FCC’s deregulation policy which made the wave of mergers possible to start off with, the reasons why companies actually merged were more complex. The headwords dominating most corporate growth strategies at that time were ‘convergence’, ‘synergy’ and ‘need for large scale’. Looking at the assessments of media mergers and corporate strategies published by the press and investment analysts one notices that they underlie a certain tendency towards unanimous and trend affected formation of opinion. While in 1999 the idea of convergence was embraced and denominated as one of the biggest opportunities for media companies ever, in 2002 the ratings and assessments of companies which tried to obtain first mover advantage in the newly emerging converged market were principally critical. At large, these judgments correlated to a very high degree with the rise and downturn of the new economy. Accordingly, some of the executives, who pressed ahead with the idea of convergence and spurred on mergers in order to achieve synergies, like Mr. Middelhoff (former CEO of Bertelsmann), Mr. Messier (former CEO of ‘Vivendi Universal) and recently Mr. Case (former chairman of AOL Time Warner) had to vacate their positions. Yet some business leaders are beginning to break up the fully integrated media groups that emanated from these mergers.

This change in corporate strategies and in the assessment of media mergers brings up the following question: Is it that a fundamental change in the business environment has occurred? And did this change make the economic motives which not long ago underlay the wave of mergers and acquisitions obsolete? Or has the media industry awoke to the cognition that the keywords ‘convergence’, ‘synergy’ and ‘need for large scale’ which fuelled the emergence of fully integrated, global media conglomerates, at no time have been more than a few hyped buzzwords?

The present thesis will elaborate the major causes for organizational changes in the global media industry and the consequences of these changes, which media companies now have to react to. The key economic characteristics prevailing in the media industry and the changes that have occurred in the latter in recent years will be analyzed on the basis of the model of the value chain. Furthermore it will be examined which economic concepts can be applied in order to evaluate the advantageousness of different types of mergers and acquisitions. In particular it will be shown that the bigger part of the strategic arguments often asserted as rationale for corporate growth strategies can be ascribed to a few basic economic concepts. In this connection it will be analyzed in detail, to which degree transaction cost theoretic considerations, which the majority of the literature about media economics treats as secondary, can contribute to the assessment of vertical growth strategies.

In chapter 2 the theoretical basis for the evaluation of corporate growth strategies is elaborated. The different growth strategies are differentiated according to their direction in the value chain. Thereby, it is analyzed in how far the various strategic aspects advocating the respective growth strategy can be attributed to more fundamental economic theories.

In chapter 3 the regulatory and technological changes, which recently occurred in the media industry, are stated and examined for their economic implications. In doing so, the change from the traditional media value chain to a multimedia value chain is explicated. Subsequently, the six biggest media groups are compared concerning their actual organizational structure and strategic focus.

Chapter 4 analyses the key economic characteristics prevailing on the particular stages of the multimedia value chain with simultaneous consideration of presumable changes in these characteristics. Furthermore, corresponding to the acquired results, the advantageousness of mergers and acquisitions on and between the particular stages is discussed on the theoretic background elaborated in chapter 2.

The management focus in chapter 5 engrosses the considerations made in chapter 4 exemplarily by means of two practical cases.

Chapter 6 summarizes the essential results constituted in this thesis.

Table of Contents: