ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the new' media sub-sectors the computer and video games industry in Britain. The traditional, or old, mass media industries-publishing, music, film, radio and television have developed relatively discretely over the past century, each based on a distinct set of analogue production technologies, business practices and regulatory principles, albeit ones that have evolved over time. In more balanced urban systems, such as Germany or the United States, the distribution of media activity is concentrated in a small number of major cities. The agglomeration economies derived from such territorially based clusters ensure that all producers benefit from localised externalities. As such, the new media industries assume significance not for their technological singularity but, rather, as a leading edge exemplar of a much wider transition away from mass production and mass consumption towards new forms of flexible, small-scale batch production. Political economy, then, introduces a concern with power and control into accounts of the dynamics of media industries.
