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The Big Five of Commercial Media |
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After a number of mergers and acquisitions five powerful media conglomerates lead the world's content production and distribution. They operate on an international basis with subsidiaries all around the globe and engage in every imaginable kind of media industry.
Table: The World's Leading Media Companies
Media Company
| 1998 Revenues
(in US$)
| Property/Corporate Information
|  AOL Time Warner (US)
| 26,838.000.000*
| http://www.timewarner.com/corp/about/timewarnerinc/corporate/index.html
| Disney (US)
| 22,976.000.000
| http://www.disney.com
| Bertelsmann (GER)
| 16,389.000.000
| http://www.bertelsmann.com/facts/report/report.cfm
|  News Corporation (AUS)
| 12,841.000.000
| http://www.newscorp.com/public/cor/cor_m.htm
| Viacom (US)
| 12,100.000.000
| http://www.viacom.com/global.tin
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(* Revenues of Time Warner only (merger with AOL took place in January 2000)
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Time Warner
The largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The corporation resulted from the merger of the publisher Time Inc. and the media conglomerate Warner Communications Inc. in 1989. It acquired the Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS) in 1996. Time Warner Inc.'s products encompass magazines, hardcover books, comic books, recorded music, motion pictures, and broadcast and cable television programming and distribution. The company's headquarters are in New York City. In January 2000 Time Warner merged with AOL (America Online), which owns several online-services like Compuserve, Netscape and Netcenter in a US$ 243,3 billion deal.
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