ABSTRACT
People like Charles Bludhorn and Steven Ross began to buy entertainment assets after they purchased film studios, but for the most part the mergers themselves involved solely a change in ownership rather than a concentration of media business power. After buying United Artists in 1981, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer itself was bought and sold several times between 1980 and 2000, including once by media mogul Ted Turner in 1986. An early entrant in international cable and satellite television, Murdoch perhaps more than any other person understood the synergies between cross-ownership of various media assets. His two biggest acquisitions in the United States during the 1980s were 20th Century Fox and Metromedia, which owned television and radio stations in sizable US markets. After buying Metromedia, Murdoch launched the Fox Network in 1986 on his newly owned stations, the first national television network to be started in over three decades.
