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Media Ownership in UK: Figure 1: Combined Market Share of Major Newspaper Owners (Vizcarrondo, 2013)

The following article tries to understand the state of media ownership in the United Kingdom. Media ownership has long been thought of as the “elephant in the room” when it comes to discussing and analysing about it. Media ownership is crucial to the functioning of the press and consequently the democracy as well. There’s a problem with plurality in the United Kingdom. Only three companies (News UK, DMGT and Trinity Mirror) have a control of almost 70% of the national circulation of newspapers (Kumar, 2016).A single news channel, Sky gives the news bulletins for almost all of the national as well as regional commercial radio. BBC accounts for the major part of television news whereas ITV accounts for the majority stake for non-BBC consumption of TV news.

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52 views3 pages

Media Ownership in UK: Figure 1: Combined Market Share of Major Newspaper Owners (Vizcarrondo, 2013)

The following article tries to understand the state of media ownership in the United Kingdom. Media ownership has long been thought of as the “elephant in the room” when it comes to discussing and analysing about it. Media ownership is crucial to the functioning of the press and consequently the democracy as well. There’s a problem with plurality in the United Kingdom. Only three companies (News UK, DMGT and Trinity Mirror) have a control of almost 70% of the national circulation of newspapers (Kumar, 2016).A single news channel, Sky gives the news bulletins for almost all of the national as well as regional commercial radio. BBC accounts for the major part of television news whereas ITV accounts for the majority stake for non-BBC consumption of TV news.

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Media Ownership in UK

The following article tries to understand the state of media ownership in the United
Kingdom. Media ownership has long been thought of as the elephant in the room
when it comes to discussing and analysing about it. Media ownership is crucial to the
functioning of the press and consequently the democracy as well. Theres a problem
with plurality in the United Kingdom. Only three companies (News UK, DMGT and
Trinity Mirror) have a control of almost 70% of the national circulation of newspapers
(Kumar, 2016).A single news channel, Sky gives the news bulletins for almost all of
the national as well as regional commercial radio. BBC accounts for the major part of
television news whereas ITV accounts for the majority stake for non-BBC
consumption of TV news.
News UK (formerly known as News International, part of which was known as News
Corporation) owned by Rupert Murdoch, has a lot of significant market share in the
print market due to the ownership of The Sun and The Times. The company also had
ownership of the News of the World but that particular paper was closed due when
revelations of the phone-hacking scandal surfaced in the year 2011. British Sky
Broadcasting which was also setup by Rupert Murdoch and wholly owned by him as
well from 1983 till the merger with British Satellite Broadcasting in the year 1990 is
another major player in the UK (Vizcarrondo, 2013).

Figure 1: Combined Market Share of major newspaper owners (Vizcarrondo, 2013)


So we can infer from the above figure that in the newspaper space three companies
namely News UK, DMGT and Trinity Mirror account for 70% of the market which
shows how concentrated the UK newspaper market is.

Figure 2: Online reach for the top 20 selected news sites in UK (Vizcarrondo, 2013).
As can be seen from the above graph, the online reach of news also remains highly
concentrated in the UK with BBC, Daily Mail and Guardian accounting for a major
chunk of the market.
As per Baetzgen & Tropp, (2015) , media plurality can be thought of as the
cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Competition as well as impartiality rules are
important in their own respect but the need for ownership rules remains. There are a
few rules in the United Kingdom which are meant to prevent media ownership. Some
of these rules are as follows:

National Cross Media Ownership Rules No single entity can own more
than 20 % of a Channel 3 license as well as national newspapers which have
a market share of greater than 20%. The same restriction applies to anyone
who has more than 20 % owned by another person who has greater than 20%
of the UK newspaper market. This is sometimes known as the 20/20/20 rule

(Baetzgen & Tropp, 2015).


Media Plurality Public Interest Test The Secretary of State is allowed to

intervene in media mergers where concerns are raised about media plurality.
Specific prohibitions on license holding There is a prohibition on political
parties holding any kind of broadcasting licenses and also on religious bodies
holding licenses for Channel 3 and Channel 5 or radio and multiplex licenses.

It can be seen that measuring media concentration is a difficult and complex task.
From the above analysis it can be inferred that media concentration has reached
endemic levels in certain sectors in the UK. The media ownership needs to be
regulated and controlled by the government in certain cases because media plurality
is an important part of any vibrant democracy. Certain laws are present in the UK to
prevent such occurrences but more control needs to be exercised by the government
to ensure that media remains transparent. Appropriate measures exist for the control
of media and many such recommendations have been proposed by Media Reform
Coalition and other such civil society groups.

References
Baetzgen, A. & Tropp, J., 2015. How Can Brand-Owned Media Be Managed?
Exploring the Managerial Success Factors of the New Interrelation Between
Brands and Media. The International Journal on Media Management, 17(3), pp.
135-155.
Kumar, S., 2016. Concentration of Media Ownership and the Imagination of Free
Speech. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(17), pp. 56-69.
Vizcarrondo, T., 2013. Measuring Concentration of Media Ownership: 19762009.
The International Journal on Media Management, 15(3), pp. 78-97.

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