Murdoch moves to reunite companies that own Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
The merger between News Corp. and The Wall Street Journal is one of a number of large consolidation plans that have become a flashpoint in the current corporate battle over media ownership on the Internet. As many have noted, one of the big reasons for this is due to the fact that so much time is spent on the Internet these days, and even though ownership of the companies in the media landscape tends to not show up in company performance reports, there is still a lot of consolidation in play.
Another reason for many to be worried about the future of the media industry is the fact that there seems to be a move afoot to break up the cable and satellite industry, and many view this as a sign of the death of media ownership. This merger would seem to be an obvious target for a media company in turmoil in its current form.
The deal is being called a “coup”, and one of the main reasons for this is the amount of money that is involved. News Corp. is said to be putting as much as $80 billion into the deal. When they say much, they mean a lot. This is about the largest media merger announced in many years, but there are many people who are worried about this deal. I’m not one of them.
While I don’t want to say that I don’t care, I will say that I believe these types of consolidations are not good for the media industry. These larger companies that are becoming the new media moguls, will inevitably be the reason to watch the downfall of media companies in the years to come. If you look at the history of most of these mergers, companies will slowly start to split apart until the whole industry is split into two large industries, one that is still profitable and one that is not. This will force the smaller companies into the latter group. If companies do not realize that this is the way things are going to go, then it will only make their problems worse.
At the same time,