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Press Gazette survey shows massive transformation in the global news media business

The UK’s Press Gazette, which I’m delighted to see still standing – at one magazine I worked at there was a veritable stampede for the office copy to get to the jobs first – has listed the world’s top news media companies. To most of us the biggies aren’t news media companies but that’s just how the world has changed.

Press Gazette

Top three are Google owner Alphabet, Facebook and Apple with Disney in fourth. Netflix is seventh (not entirely sure Netflic and Disney should qualify because of their subscriptions) just ahead of Amazon. The biggest old-style media owner is Viacom with Rupert Murdoch way down the list The full report is here.)

Alphabet earns a staggering $150bn from advertising, Facebook $69bn and Apple, from its services business, $53bn. Murdoch’s News Corp’s total turnover is $9bn. And Alphabet and Facebook are adamant they’re not publishers but ‘platforms.’

News media companies used to be the gatekeepers of the communications world before the democratisation of the internet era. Now everyone can have a go and clearly advertisers and media agencies chase the biggest numbers, for all their talk of data-based insights.

Alphabet and Facebook have run away with the market, mostly at insignificant cost (by their standards.)

Sobering.

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