Oct

Media and Ownership Around the World

by Columbia Institute for Tele-Information

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Date and Time

Tue, October 20, 2015

8:30 AM – 5:30 PM EDT

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Location

3022 Broadway

Uris 301

New York, NY 10027

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Columbia Institute for Tele-Information

Who Owns the World's Media? Ownership and Concentration

Around the World

Tuesday, October 20th 2015

Columbia University Campus
Uris Hall 301
3022 Broadway and 116th St.
New York, NY 10027

8:30am-5:30pm

Media concentration has been an issue around the world. To some observers, the power of large media conglomerates has never been greater. To others, the Internet has brought openness and diversity. Which perspective is correct? The answer has significant policy and business implications.

The answer to the empirical question is not as obvious as many sincerely believe. Although numerous large-scale mergers have taken place, the sector itself has grown rapidly. Also, de-mergers have taken place. And with digital convergence and globalization, firms have been crossing industry and national lines.

Why extend the analysis to the world at large? Because if we can identify common trends, we can seek the drivers, whether technological, economic, or political. This has policy implications. When drivers are fundamental in nature it is difficult to deal with them through regulatory policy. But when a country or a region is an outlier, with a media market that is different from similarly positioned countries, a corrective policy might be more effective.

To address this question, this conference analyzes the media sector, across countries and across time, and identifies its dynamics, concentration, and ownership trends. The conference will discuss the findings and implications of a CITI-led study on international media concentration. This project brought together author teams from 30 countries examining 13 media industries in the platform, distribution, and content sectors. The result is a book published by Oxford University Press, to be unveiled at the conference. The book is 1300 pages in length and includes 800 figures and tables. It aims to provide a serious data analysis of questions of media concentration trends, their drivers, the impact of technology, and variations across countries and industries.

Draft Agenda

8:30-9:00am Registration and Breakfast

9:00-9:15am Welcome

Introduction of Topic, Project, and of the International Collaboration on Media Concentration

Eli Noam, Columbia University

Media Concentration and the OSI

Marius Dragomir, Open Society Foundations, London.

The conference format is a series of short panels on overarching themes, including reference to specific countries and to the report's findings, provided by the authors of country chapters and members of the International Collaboration on Media Concentration.

9:15-9:50am - Trends of Concentration in Content Industries: a Problem? What are Policy Approaches?