Financialization enables media consolidation by funding debt-fueled mergers.

Evidence

The result of asset management firms, corporate venture capital, private equity, and financial engineering in Hollywood is a surge in the consolidation that has been transforming the media sector since the 1970s. Financialization is facilitating an increase in scale in a global marketplace and permitting big media companies to take on massive debt to enact mergers and acquisitions, as shown in table 4.4. Telecommunications companies have targeted content companies to expand beyond their traditional role as mere providers of network access, in such massive deals as Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal and AT&T’s acquisitions of DirecTV and Time Warner. Content companies, meanwhile, have sought out sources of intellectual property to expand content catalogs, as the sector transitions to streaming technology in which viewers privilege access over ownership. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s home domain: telecoms buying content (Comcast/NBCU, AT&T/Time Warner) as the first link in tracing ownership structure to artistic form.
• SEED: The Comcast-NBCU and AT&T-Time Warner vertical integrations are concrete entry points for an essay tracing how a distribution company’s balance sheet shapes what content gets made.