Media Conglomeration

This text is a comparative analysis involving one media example, the Walt Disney Company, and two media approaches, the media as cultural industries and media conglomeration. The first part of this comparative analysis will be a frame of reference to understand Disney’s ownership and structure within the media sector. Discussing the Disney Companies subsidiaries will show this. The frame of reference will also be used to state facts that show Disney as a cultural industry. The reason for this is to firstly help us understand the two media approaches and their relevance to Disney. Following the frame of reference will be a ground for comparison; an explanation stating why I have chosen the cultural industries and media conglomeration to relate to Disney. This will be followed by the thesis. The aim within the thesis will be to spot and analyse comparatives, issues and problematize facts within the media approaches. To summarise this essay there will be a conclusion including the main points of my arguments.

Disney’s conglomeration spreads across five different categories; Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, Studio Entertainment, Consumer Products and the Interactive (Forbes, 2013). These categories show that Disney is a conglomerate because they focus on many different mediums all grouped under the same business. These categories also show that Disney is a cultural industry; David Hesmondhalgh’s definition will reinstate this:

…the cultural industries have usually been thought of as those institutions … that are most directly involved in the production of social meaning. Therefore, nearly all definitions of the cultural industries would include television …, radio, the cinema, newspaper, magazine and book publishing, the music reco...

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...dcast their productions.

Horizontal integration is where a company buys out the competition, eliminating possible threats of being beaten in the market. Examples of horizontal integration from Disney would be there 2006 takeover of Pixar for $7.4bn, Marvel for $4.2bn in 2009 and LucasFilms for $4.05bn in 2012.

Cultural industries often rely on other companies to help with different aspects of their productions. In Disney’s early days they relied on distribution deals for their animations. Walt Disney created Alice Comedies in 1923 which was signed to M.J. Winkler Productions; in 1927 they also distributed Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

As we can now see a major difference between the cultural industries and media conglomerates is the ability to minimize production costs by owning companies that can cover every aspect of production, re-production and distribution.