Indiantelevision.com Team

(24 February 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Time Warner occupies the top spot in Zenithoptimedia's ranking of the leading 30 global media owners.

Time Warner generates US$30 billion which is 13 per cent out of the total $215 billion that the top 30 global media owners earn in media revenue

The US has by far the most media owners in the ranking, followed by - in descending order – Japan, France and the UK, Germany, Italy and Mexico.

Two new-media companies – Google and Yahoo – are in the top 30. ZenithOptimedia's ranking of the world’s biggest media owners is based on their revenues from activities that support advertising.

Some companies on the list are entirely media-focussed; others are corporate giants for which media forms only a small part of their overall turnover. ZenithOptimedia’s ranking strips out the non-media revenues to provide a true measure of each company’s size and power in the media market.

The ranking is based on revenues for 2005, or the nearest equivalent for companies whose financial years are different from calendar years. Some companies’ media revenues are therefore from the financial years ending in March 2006 or June 2006.
Time Warner is by some distance the largest media owner in the world, with $30 billion in media revenue. News Corp, the second-largest, generated just over half that – $17 billion.

The five top media owners are all based in the US. Each has at least a half share in a US television network, but their other holdings vary in nature and international extent. In all, 16 of the top 30 media owners are from the US. The other countries with media owners in the top 30 are Japan (with four representatives), France and the UK (with three each), Germany (two) and Italy and Mexico (one each).

Two new-media companies are in the top 30: Google, at 13th, and Yahoo! at 15th. The ranking forms part of a new report from ZenithOptimedia called the Top Thirty Global Media Owners. The report provides an overview of each media owner’s operations and lists the media properties they own, along with key personnel, media shareholdings, and financial data.

The Top five global media owners are
1. Time Warner 29,834
2. News Corporation 16,726
3. General Electric 14,689
4. CBS 13,389
5. Disney 13,207