Mapping Who Owns What? Media Hegemonies

After researching different corporations, my group decided to choose Viacom to focus on. Using the book, We the Media, we were able to find all the different companies that Viacom owns. Viacom owns four different groups, Viacom Entertainment Group, Blockbuster Entertainment group, Spelling Entertainment, Republic Entertainment, Laurel Entertainment, Home Video and Paramount Communications, Inc. All of these groups consist of many different companies.
The following are a few of the companies that the 4 biggest groups own...

Viacom Entertainment Group:

• Nickelodeon
• The Movie Channel
• All News Channels
• 15 Radio Stations
• Famous Players
• The Free Press

Blockbuster Entertainment Group:

• Blockbuster Music
• Super Club Music
• Sound Warehouse Music
• Blockbuster Video

Spelling Entertainment:

• Spelling Films International
• Spelling Television
• Spelling Satellite Networks

Paramount Communications, Inc.

• 5 Paramount parks in the U.S. and Canada
• Paramount Home Video
• UPN Network

As a group we each researched Viacom individually and then combined all of our information together. We then all made a poster, which consisted of a web map. We put Viacom in the middle and then all around it were the groups that they own. Then attached to the groups were the companies that they owned.

I learnt a lot from this assignment. I learnt that a lot of big corporations own hundreds of smaller ones and that they all in some way can be connected to each other.

Media ownership is happening all over the world and in some countries that's OK, but in others it is a problem. "A number of other countries do already allow cross-media ownership, that is to say, one owner can run both TV and newspapers in the same country. One of those countries is Canada, but the way the system operates there has caused disquiet. One company, Canwest Global, owns one of the biggest commercial TV stations in Canada, reaching 94 per cent of the population. Canwest also owns nine local TV stations, a national newspaper and 14 metropolitan dailies. The company is controlled by one family, the Aspers, who, by the way, also have a majority share in Australia's Channel Ten" (Murray, Brenda).

Sources:

Murray, Brenda. Cross-media ownership causes disquiet in Canada. May 21, 2002. October, 13 2007.

<http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s560762.htm>