Bagdikians stated in his book The Media Monopoly, that in 1987 there where fifty media conglomerates dominating the overwhelming majority of the US media. Within 10 years to 1997 that figure had dropped to just ten, with a dozen or so other firms assuming secondary positions.
Disney, Time Warner, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News corporation, TCI, Sony, General Electric's (owner of NBC), Polygram and Seagram (owner of Universal) are those firms in the top tier of conglomerates that operate in every corner of the world. The annual sales of these firms in 1997 ranged from $10 billion to $25 billion. Such firms as Disney and Time Warner have seen their non-US revenues climb from around 15% to 30% in six years, and with in the next few years they expect to earn the majority of their income outside the US. A global commercial media system is not entirely new. For most of this century the export markets for motion pictures, TV programmes, music, recordings and books, have been dominated by western firms, usually the US. .
In addition to this centralisation of media power, the major feature of the global media order is its increasing interest in commercialism and an associated marked decline in the relative importance of public broadcasting. With the increased globalisation of the world economy, advertising has come to play a crucial role in the few hundred firms that dominate it. The spending on advertisements per capita is increasing at a rate well above GDP growth rates almost everywhere in the world. Moreover, the global advertising agency market has undergone a wave of consolidation every bit a striking as that in the media industry. In the late 1990's three enormous firms, WPP group, Omnicom group and Inter-public, came to dominate the industry, along with another half dozen or so agencies, based mostly in New York, but also in London, Paris, Chicago and Tokyo. Edward S Herman states that " such a concentration of media power in organisations dependant on advertisers support and responsibility to the share holders, is a clear and present danger to the citizens participation in public affairs.
