Structure and ownership of the media sector

2011-09-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

For our first assigment we have had to choose two media companies and reasearch about them; i have chosen to do Trinity mirror and Viacom.

Trinity mirror

Trinity Mirror plc (LSE: TNI) is a large British newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Its headquarters are at Canary Wharf in London. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, it is a constituent of the FTSE Small Cap Index

Mark Dickinson is the Business Development director for trinity Regional’s at trinity mirror group PLC. He had studied at Manchester University studying BA Hons, Psychology 1969-1973. And then became Business development director at trinity mirror north west and Wales/Editorial Director at trinity mirror midlands and also Editor-in-chief at trinity mirror North West and Wales.

The Daily Mirror was launched by Alfred Harmsworth for gentlewomen in 1903. The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange on 2 December 1953

LONDON - Sly Bailey, the Trinity Mirror chief executive, today renewed her plea for a shake-up in merger rules that are threatening Britain's regional newspapers with extinction.
Her call, at the Digital Britain Summit, follows a year in which some 60 local papers have closed and thousands of journalists have lost their jobs.All have been victims of an advertising slump, a migration of ad revenues online, and the launch of a host of local authority-funded newspapers.
Bailey insisted publishing groups were not asking for state support, only a change in arcane laws that would allow newspapers to compete more equally with their internet rivals."Concern about our dominant position doesn’t apply anymore," she said. "If we are going to compete with a myriad of digital operations, we’re going to need more scale."
She added: "Allowing regional newspaper publishers to merge is the only way to limit the damage to our industry."
Bailey said she was not calling for a shake-up in the rules because of the recession but because those rules were out of date.
"Can we imagine a Britain without regional newspapers?" she asked. "Soon, we may not have to. Soon, we may be left with outdated regulation but nothing left to regulate. If newspapers are to thrive, a level playing field is required."
Bailey criticised newspapers for creating what she called "gargantuan websites" that had eroded the value of news and commoditised it.
"If consumers don’t care where their news comes from, why should advertisers?" she asked. "We have been playing into the hands of businesses which have played fast and loose with our content."
Are Trinity Mirror corrupt?

As all three party leaders appear to have reached consensus on barring Rupert Murdoch’s News International from a takeover of BSkyB, it is worth probing the scapegoat thesis a little further. His Grace has been accused of being ‘gloriously off message’ with this, but facts are facts. (is this true?)

Trinity Mirror: 1663 incidents by 139 journalists
Mail Group: 1248 incidents by 95 journalists
News International: 182 incidents by 19 journalists

Trinity mirrors half-year financial report for the 26 weeks ended July 3^rd 2011

Summary

Board anticipates performance for 2011 to be in line with expectations

Group revenuedown by 2.9% to £371.0 million (2010: £382.2 million)

Operating profitdown by 23.7% to £47.1 million (2010: £61.7 million)

Earnings per sharedown by 11.6% to 12.2 pence (2010: 13.8 pence)

Structural annual cost savings target increased by a further £10 million to £25 million for 2011

Group remains cash generative with net debtfalling by £3.7 million to £262.2 million after pension deficit funding payments of £33.0 million

Pension deficit (net of deferred tax) fell by £43.6 million to £73.9 million

The Group has limited the decline in operating profit despite the challenging economic environment, which has been much weaker than previously anticipated. The difficult trading conditions, driven by ongoing public sector spending cuts, tax increases and weak retail sales have impacted revenues in conjunction with continued substantial inflationary cost pressures, in particular newsprint prices.

Viacom.

Viacom Inc. short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television. As of 2010, it is the world's fourth-largest media conglomerate, behind The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner and News Corporation.

Early years of Viacom.

In March 2005, the prior Viacom announced plans of looking into splitting the company into two publicly traded companies. The company was not only dealing with a stagnating stock price, but also the rivalry between Leslie Moonves and Tom Freston, longtime heads of MTV Networks.
After the departure of Mel Karmazin in 2004, Sumner Redstone, who served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, decided to split the offices of President and Chief Operating Officer between Moonves and Freestone. Redstone was set to retire in the near future, and a split was seen as a creative solution to the matter of replacing him. It was also intended to provide alternative investments that would be more appealing to different investors – one a high cash flow, lower growth company that could afford to pay a substantial dividend and the other a growing company that would have greater investment opportunities and therefore would not be expected to pay a dividend.
Here is a list of assets that Viacom own;
Film production and distribution: Viacom International, Paramount pictures, MTV films, Nickelodeon movies.
Television Networks: Comedy central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV land, Nick@nite, Nickelodeon, Teen Nick, Nick.jr, MTV, VH1, MTV2, Tr3s, CMT, Palladia

Video gaming: GameTrailers, Neopets

New media: MTV New Media

Viacom have ownership with a lot of other media companies such as:

10 BET channels

6 CMT channels

C omedy central

A variety of MTV channels, TMF and more.

Nickelodeon channels And many more companies and channels.

In February 2011, Hulu and Viacom announced the return of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" to Hulu, along with shows from the Viacom library. Nickelodeon's shows are not part of this deal.Also that month, Viacom invested in the Rainbow Group.

The Rainbow Group, was formed in 1984a coalition of Greens, Regionalists and other parties of the left unaffiliated with any of the international organizations.
The German Greens and the Dutch Green Progressive Alliance were weakened by a principle of rotation used by the Germany and Dutch parties, requiring its MEPs to sit for only half their five-year term.
In 1989Rainbow split. The Greens went off to form the Green Group, whilst the Regionalists stayed in Rainbow. This new Rainbow had the shorter name of Rainbow Group in the European Parliament.
On July 1^st the had been a report on a Hacker Crew called #Antisec that had gone after Viacom and Universal Music. Hacker crew #AntiSec, formed from the ashes of the brief but notorious LulzSec, is claiming to have released a cache of files from the servers of Viacom and Universal Music, according to the Wall Street Journal. Torrents credited to the group have shown up on torrent site The Pirate Bay, which purport to contain umusic.com user passwords and “internal mapping of Viacom and its servers.”

Says text in the file description, “#AntiSec is more than Lulz and more than even Anonymous,” referencing the popular 4chan internet mischief-makers. "It is our true belief that this movement has the capability to change the world. And should that fail, we will at least rock the world… We provide material that is primarily against corrupt Governments (in our world this is all Governments) and corrupt companies.” No word on exactly why they consider Viacom a corrupt company, but given hackers’ love of free information, we’re guessing it may have something to do with $1 billion dollar copyright infringement suit against YouTube from 2007.
With Viacom Comprising BET Networks, MTV Networks, and Paramount Pictures, Viacom connects with audiences through television, motion pictures, mobile platforms and online in more than 160 countries and territories. Viacom operates approximately 170 media networks reaching more than 600 million global subscribers and more than 500 branded digital media properties.

Media Ownership

Structure and ownership of the media sector