Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [33]
TABLE 1–1
Financial Data for Twenty-four
Large Media Corporations
(or Their Parent Firms), December 1986
COMPANY
TOTAL ASSETS ($ MILLIONS)
PROFITS BEFORE TAXES ($ MILLIONS)
PROFITS AFTER TAXES ($ MILLIONS)
TOTAL REVENUE ($ MILLIONS)
Advance Publications (Newhouse)1
2,500
NA
NA
2,200
Capital Cities/ABC
5,191
688
448
4,124
CBS
3,370
470
370
4,754
Cox Communications2
1,111
170
87
743
Dow Jones & Co.
1,236
331
183
1,135
Gannett
3,365
540
276
2,801
General Electric (NBC)
34,591
3,689
2,492
36,725
Hearst3
4,040
NA
215
(1983)
2,100
(1983)
Knight-Ridder
1,947
267
140
1,911
McGraw-Hill
1,463
296
154
1,577
News Corp. (Murdoch)4
8,460
377
170
3,822
New York Times
1,405
256
132
1,565
Reader’s Digest5
NA
75–110
(1985)
NA
1,400
(1985)
Scripps-Howard6
NA
NA
NA
1,062
Storer7
1,242
68
(—17)
537
Taft
1,257
(—11)
(—53)
500
Time, Inc.
4,230
626
376
3,762
Times-Mirror
2,929
680
408
2,948
Triangle8
NA
NA
NA
730
Tribune Co.
2,589
523
293
2,030
Turner Broadcasting
1,904
(—185)
(—187)
570
U.S. News & World Report9
200+
NA
NA
140
Washington Post
1,145
205
100
1,215
Westinghouse
8,482
801
670
10,731
NA = not available
1. The asset total is taken from Forbes magazine’s wealth total for the Newhouse family for 1985; the total revenue is for media sales only, as reported in Advertising Age, June 29, 1987.
2. Cox Communications was publicly owned until 1985, when it was merged into another Cox family company, Cox Enterprises. The data presented here are for year-end 1984, the last year of public ownership and disclosure of substantial financial information.
3. Data compiled in William Barrett, “Citizens Rich,” Forbes, Dec. 14, 1987.
4. These data are in Australian dollars and are for June 30, 1986; at that date the Australian dollar was worth of a U.S. dollar.
5. Data for 1985, as presented in the New York Times, Feb. 9, 1986.
6. Total revenue for media sales only, as reported in Advertising Age, June 29, 1987.
7. Storer came under the control of the Wall Street firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 1985; the data here are for December 1984, the last period of Storer autonomy and publicly available information.
8. Total revenue for media sales only; from Advertising Age, June 29, 1987.
9. Total assets as of 1984–85, based on “Mort Zuckerman, Media’s New Mogul,” Fortune, Oct. 14, 1985; total revenue from Advertising Age, June 29, 1987.
The greater profitability of the media in a deregulated environment has also led to an increase in takeovers and takeover threats, with even giants like CBS and Time, Inc., directly attacked or threatened. This has forced the managements of the media giants to incur greater debt and to focus ever more aggressively and unequivocally on profitability, in order to placate owners and reduce the attractiveness of their properties to outsiders.22 They have lost some of their limited autonomy to bankers, institutional investors, and large individual investors whom they have had to solicit as potential “white knights.”23
While the stock of the great majority of large media firms is traded on the securities markets, approximately two-thirds of these companies are either closely held or still controlled by members of the originating family who retain large blocks of stock. This situation is changing as family ownership becomes diffused among larger numbers of heirs and the market opportunities for selling media properties continue to improve, but the persistence of family control is evident in the data shown in table 1–2. Also evident in the table is the enormous wealth possessed by the controlling families of the top media