The Walt Disney Company is the largest independant is an American multinational "mass media and entertainment" conglomerate. It is the largest media conglomerate in the world, with a revenue of $59.434 billion in 2018.The company was founded in 1923 by American entrepreneurs Walt Disney and Roy. O Disney and originally traded under the name "Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio'. The current CEO of the company is New York-born media executive and businessman, Bob Iger. Through movies alone, The Walt Disney Company has earned almost one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) in box office revenue. The firm has over 210,000 employees worldwide
Disney own an indescribable amount of our media and this diagram that I have found is the best way to understand it.
Stores
"Disney" has become a household name for most and the company has created hundreds ofmovies and TV shows loved by children and adults across the world. Since its formation Disney have ventured into many corners of the media industry including film, TV and music. Alongside this has come the development of merchandise and with over 387 "Disney Stores" worldwide, the company has not only taken over our media but also our high street. With every movie or TV show that is released by the company, there is guaranteed to be a doll, stuffed toy or outfit to go along with it. This is just one of the reasons how Disney have been able to generate so much profit and maintain a huge part of our childhoods.
Parks/Resorts
The first Disney theme park was opened in 1955 entitled "Disneyland" in Anahiem, California. This was followed by the development of "Walt Disney World" in 1965 in Orlando, Florida. There are also two parks/resorts outside of the United States. The first to be opened was "Tokyo Disney Resort" in 1983 and "Disneyland Paris" which was opened in 1992. Since 2005, there have been a further two to open in Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively. There are reportedly approximately 130,000 individual employees across all of the Disney Resorts, with Walt Disney World employing 62,000 people (approx), making it the largest single-site employer in America.
Television
The Walt Disney Company own a multitude of television channels including some under theirname, such as Disney Channel and also other channels including Lifetime and EPSN. In 1996 Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc. and re-branded the media conglomerate as Disney–ABC Television Group. In doing so, Disney acquired all ABC television networks. In the past couple of years, Disney bid to purchase European broadcasting company, Sky, however lost out to fellow media conglomerate, Comcast. Disney currently have over thirty original TV shows still broadcasting new episodes with several in the pipe line for 2019. It has created critically acclaimed, award winning shows for the Disney Channel such as "Boy Meets World" "Hannah Montana", "Good Luck Charlie" and "Wizards of Waverly Place" and it is responsible for the introduction of many of our modern celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez all of which. In September 2019, Disney will break into the steaming market with their own service, Disney+. This is set to be a competitor for streaming giant, Netflix, in which Disney will remove all of their assets from. The service, which will also include National Geographic, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars-based content, will compliment the streaming service, Hulu, which Disney will have 60% ownership of following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
Music
Moreover, in 1956 The Walt Disney Company founded Disney Music Group, now one of the largest record labels in the US. The label was originally founded to house the soundtracks to Disney films. However the group now owns Hollywood Records, a label which primarily focuses on pop, rock, alternative and country genres, as well as soundtracks from Marvel Studios' films. Originally, the label was primarily a soundtrack label for non-Disney branded releases by Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures, with few major artists, like Queen. However, the label now releases music from a roster of 'major' artists such as: Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Holt and Shawn Hook.
Merge with 21st Century Fox
In 2017, Disney began negotiations with 21st Century Fox to merge the two companies. In April 2018, Peter Rice revealed that the merger is expected to close by the summer of 2019. However, on June 13 of the same year "Comcast" announced their own bid for Fox worth $65 billion. By July 19, Comcast withdrew its bid to buy Fox, ending Disney's last obstacle to buying it itself. The deal is expected to close by June 2019. As a result of this, The Walt Disney Company will acquire many of Fox's assets as shown in the diagram to the side.
Curran and Seaton's theory denotes that the media is controlled by a very small amount of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power. In my opinion this is definitely the case as even with looking at just one company, Disney, I have discovered just how much of the media that they own.
However, the idea that media concentration "generally limits or inhibits variety, creativity and quality" is something that I have varying opinions on. Although, yes, the fact that fewer people are having input in many media products can make them repetitive and stunt creativity however, I have noticed some huge developments in film, TV and music and I do believe that it is more based on the people who are working within these companies that have more of an effect on their output. After all, a company is not just its CEO, it is made up of everyone from all levels of the hierarchy. In saying this, it is true that as different aspects of the media get more popular, these large companies 'jump on the bandwagon' and start to create similar things in a bid to fight for popularity.
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