Media companies run internal venture arms to profit while entrenching oligopoly.

Evidence

The impacts of institutional investors, asset managers, PE firms, and hedge funds can be considered external forces of financialization acting on the cultural industries, by companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Bain Capital, KKR, Carlyle, TPG, Elliott Management, Pershing Square, and Third Point. While their executives and managers have direct effects on the actions of media production, there is also a corresponding internal force of financialization in the form of ­corporate venture capital (CVC). For large media companies, investment in tech startups through their own CVC arm has many functions: earning profits that do not need to be shared with talent, obtaining research on the latest technological and consumer developments, preventing new competition from gaining a ­foothold, and maintaining an oligopoly. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 149

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the external (PE/hedge fund) vs internal (corporate venture capital) taxonomy of financialization forces on media.