ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the processes and dynamics of media concentration and conglomeration but also assesses evidence of counter-trends and reconfiguration of media firms. The media are businesses, predominantly, that operate according to business logic and capitalist economic processes. Castells, these organisational changes form part of a communication revolution that includes technological transformations but also transformations in cultural identifications and practices, the latter including opposition to the consumerist branded culture of the global entertainment industry. The tendency to focus on news and information has left the case for tackling problems of ownership and control in entertainment and cultural expression weaker. In entertainment media, hypercommercialism has involved increasing advertiser integration and the production of programme genres like reality TV that are cheap to produce and attract large aggregate audiences to secure advertising finance. Political economy has been condemned for reading off consequences for cultural production from important, but rudimentary, categories like public and private ownership.
