media ownership

1. Name of Institution
Media Ownership
Who owns the media?

2. Name of InstitutionOwnership patterns
• Individual
• Partnership
• Corporation
• Employee ownership
• Trust/society owned
• Government owned

3. Name of InstitutionOwnership patterns
• Vertical
• Group or chain ownership
• Joint Ownership

4. Name of InstitutionKey Trends
• Dominance over specific markets by a few players
…markets are often oligopolistic in character.
• The absence of restrictions on cross-media
ownership implies that particular companies
dominate markets
 Vertically
 horizontally
 diagonally
• Political parties and persons with political affiliation
own/control increasing sections of the media in
India.

5. Name of InstitutionThe mediascape in India
• Indian media market differs from those of
developed countries…highly fragmented,
due to the large number of languages and
the sheer size of the country
• Proliferation of publications, radio stations,
television channels, and internet websites

6. Name of InstitutionDelhi Market
• Print publications - 82,000 publications
registered with the Registrar of
Newspapers as on 31 March 2011
• But in a market like Delhi…16 English
NPs…top 3 publications – TOI, HT, ET
account for 3/4th
of total market for all
English dailies.

7. Name of InstitutionIndia vs. Others
• Countries like US, UK, France, Canada
have a free press but there are restrictions
on ownership…in India, no restrictions
• Most conglomerates have subsidiary
companies….need to place restrictions not
on “companies” but on “entities” such as
BCCL

8. Name of InstitutionOwnership Restrictions
• Indian media cos. Have protested attempts to
restrict ownership…Govt has played along
• Report by ASCI: Ample evidence of market
dominance in specific media markets. In
favour of “appropriate” regulatory framework
to enforce cross-media ownership
restrictions, especially in regional media
markets where there is “significant
concentration” and market dominance in
comparison to national markets (Hindi and
English media).

9. Name of InstitutionKey trends
• The promoters of media groups have
traditionally held interests in many other
business interests and continue to do so,
often using their media outlets to further
these.
• Growing corporatization: Large industrial
conglomerates are acquiring direct and
indirect interest in media groups.
• Growing convergence between
creators/producers of media content and
those who distribute/disseminate the content

10. Name of InstitutionOther business interests
• Promoters of media companies have subsidiary
business interests in varied sectors.
• For eg,Dainik Bhaskar group, which, in 1958, ran
a single edition Hindi newspaper from Bhopal, has
a market capitalization of Rs 4,454 crore (as on
July 30. 2010), owns seven newspapers, two
magazines, 17 radio stations, and has a significant
presence in the printing, textiles, oils, solvent
extraction, hotels, real estate, and power-
generation industries.

11. Name of InstitutionSo what?
• Boards of directors of a number of media
companies now include/included
representatives of big corporate entities
that are advertisers.
• Emphasis on botttom-line rather than
byline
• Paid news and private treaties

12. Name of InstitutionJagran Publications
• MD of Pantaloon Retail, Kishore Biyani
• McDonald India’s MD Vikram Bakshi
• Leather-maker Mirza International’s MD
Rashid Mirza
• CEO of media consulting firm Lodestar
Universal India, Shashidhar Sinha,
• Chairman of the real estate firm JLL
Meghraj, Anuj Puri

13. Name of InstitutionHT Media
• Former chairman of Ernst & Young K. N.
Memani
• Chairman of ITC Ltd Y C Deveshwar

14. Name of InstitutionDB Corp (Dainik Bhaskar)
• Head of Piramal Enterprises Group, Ajay
Piramal
• MD of Warburg Pincus, Nitin Malhan
• Executive chairman of advertising firm
Ogilvy & Mather, Piyush Pandey.

15. Name of InstitutionWhy media consolidation?
• Economies of scale by spreading costs of
production and distribution and
“rationalizing” the utilisation of resources.
• Convergence of media,
telecommunications, and computing
technologies has also blurred the
distinctions between different media.

16. Name of InstitutionImpact on democracy
• Growing concentration of ownership in an
oligopolistic market that could lead to loss
of heterogeneity and plurality
• Growth of internet vs. shrinking in the
number of traditional media operations in
TV and print

17. Name of InstitutionThe rationale
• Vertical integration can result in anti-
competitive behaviour, whereby a distributor
can favour his/her own broadcasters’
contents over the content of a competitive
broadcaster. In this scenario, large
conglomerates would be able to impose their
preferred content, a clearly dangerous
situation.
• Already disputes between broadcasters and
cable operators alleging denial of content by
other service providers: TRAI

18. Name of InstitutionMedia consolidation
• January 2012, the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance
Industries Limited (RIL) – India’s biggest privately-
owned corporate entity with a turnover of Rs. 2,58,651
crore – announced that it was entering into a complex,
multi-layered financial arrangement…involved selling
of its interests in AP- based Eenadu group founded by
Ramoji Rao to the Network 18 group headed by
Raghav Bahl and also funding the latter through a
rights issue of shares.
• The deal will make the combined conglomerate India’s
biggest media group, according to Bahl -- bigger than
media groups such as STAR controlled by Rupert
Murdoch, and BCCL controlled by the Jain family.

19. Name of InstitutionRecent Examples
• Horizontal: Co. which publishes Dainik
Jagran took over co. which publishes Nai
Duniya
• Vertical: Rupert Murdoch-led STAR group
controlling cable distributor Hathway, the
Zee group controlling DTH satellite
channels provider Dish TV, and the Sun
group controlling cable distributor
Sumangali.

20. Name of InstitutionRecent Examples
• Diagonal – Eg: strategic association between
a telecommunications company and a media
company to use common infrastructure
• Two recent examples are: (a) the strategic
association of Reliance Industries Limited
(RIL), India’s largest corporate entity in the
private sector, with the Network 18 and the
Eenadu groups and (b) the Aditya Birla group
acquiring a substantial holding in the Living
Media group.

21. Name of Institution
• May 2012, the Aditya Birla group announced that it
had acquired a 27.5 per cent stake in Living Media
India Limited, a company headed by Aroon Purie.
Living Media acts as a holding company and also
owns 57.46 per cent in TV Today Network, the listed
company that controls the group’s television channels
(Aaj Tak and Headlines Today) and a host of
publications (including India Today).
• December 2011, Oswal Green Tech, formerly Oswal
Chemicals & Fertilizers, acquired a 14.17 per cent
shareholding in NDTV in two separate block deals
from the investment arms of Merill Lynch and Nomura
Capital.

22. Name of InstitutionConcerns
• With larger television broadcast networks,
including Zee, Turner/CNN, Viacom/MTV
and Sony, expected to acquire/partner
regional networks, the commoditization of
news seems inevitable

23. Name of Institution
Ends!
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