Financialized debt fuels the consolidation wave reshaping media ownership
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
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Financialization enables media consolidation by funding debt-fueled mergers. (similarity 0.97)
- Streaming transition and PE debt financing accelerate library consolidation among studios (similarity 0.86)
- Financialization drives Hollywood consolidation and reduced creative capacity (similarity 0.84)
- Efficient-market myth must be abandoned to understand media ownership (similarity 0.80)
- Financial capital, not just ownership, drives media consolidation (similarity 0.80)
- Media homogenization results from the broader political economy and financial capital’s power (similarity 0.79)
- Media companies run internal venture arms to profit while entrenching oligopoly. (similarity 0.79)
- Contemporary media are far more derivative and finance-driven than past media (similarity 0.79)
- Streaming challengers are funded by finance, unlike past tech disruptions (similarity 0.79)