ranking of the world’s top media owners

•  The top 30 global media owners generate a total of US$215 billion in media revenue

•  Top-ranked Time Warner generates US$30 billion, 13% of the total

•  The U.S. has by far the most media owners in the ranking, followed by – in descending order — Japan, France and the U.K., Germany, Italy and Mexico

•  Two new-media companies — Google and Yahoo — make the top 30

ZenithOptimedia

ZenithOptimedia publishes its unique ranking of the world’s biggest media owners, which is based on their revenues from activities that support advertising. Some companies on the list are entirely media-focused; others are corporate giants for which media forms only a small part of their overall turnover. Non-media revenues are stripped out to provide a true measure of each company’s size and power in the media market. The ranking is based on revenues for 2005, or the nearest equivalent for companies whose financial years are different from calendar years. Some companies’ media revenues are therefore from the financial years ending in March 2006 or June 2006.

Time Warner Heads the List

Time Warner is by some distance the largest media owner in the world, with US$30 billion in media revenue. News Corp, the second-largest, generated just over half that — US$17 billion.
The five top media owners are all based in the US. Each has at least a half share in a U.S. television network, but their other holdings vary in nature and international extent. In all, 16 of the top 30 media owners are from the U.S. The other countries with media owners in the top 30 are Japan (with four representatives), France and the U.K. (with three each), Germany (two) and Italy and Mexico (one each).

Two new-media companies are in the top 30: Google, at 13th, and Yahoo!,
at 15th.

GO TO: [1] [2]