Media Management and Economics 2005 Abstracts
Media Management and Economics Division
Effects of Ownership Structure on the Financial Performance of Publicly-Traded Newspaper Companies • Soontae An, Hyun Seung Jin, and Todd Simon, Kansas State University • This study examined the effects of ownership structure on the financial performance of twelve publicly traded newspaper companies. Institutional ownership of shares, ownership concentration by major institutional investors, and insider ownership by managers were analyzed longitudinally to see effects on financial performance. The results showed that the level of institutional ownership in one year was negatively associated with the subsequent year’s profitability, as measured by return on equity and return on assets.
Stability and Strategy: Consequences of Clusters in the Radio Industry • Todd Chambers, Texas Tech University • The passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to the development of local radio clusters where one company could control five, six, seven or eight stations. This study examined issues of program diversity, market share stability and programming strategies within clusters. Using a random sample of 50 radio markets, measures for market share, ownership concentration and format diversity were compared between a time-period for 2000 and 2003/2004.
Content Development for the Third Screen: The Business and Strategy of Mobile Content and Applications in the United States • Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida • Next to television sets and computer monitors, today’s mobile telephones offer a “third screen” that delivers information, entertainment, communication, and even transactional services to a growingly mobile society. Applying a value chain framework, the author examined the state of the mobile phone industry and assessed the strategies that established media firms have adopted in exploring this emerging platform. It was found that media conglomerates with strong brands have an advantage in this new content market.
Television Program Trade in East Asia • Jae Eun Chung, Indiana University • International flow of television programs has long been a one-way flow from U.S. East Asia, however, recently saw an increase in regional television program trade. Employing home market model, this paper explains the recent increase in the regional trade and concludes that the increased regional trade is attributable to the media liberalization and deregulation, the advancement of new multi-channel video delivery service system, such as cable and satellite television, and the cultural proximity within the region.
Microniche, Microdimension, Macrodollars: An Examination of Cable Sports Networks and Niche Resource Expansion • Amy Jo Coffey, University of Georgia • America can’t get enough cable sports networks. Far from being ESPN, the second wave of networks that emerged in the 1990s are “microniche” networks such as The Golf Channel, Outdoor Life Network, and Speed Channel. This paper explores the concept of resource expansion in the niche. The national advertising microdimension is compared with the number of networks in the niche over a tenyear period, revealing strong correlation and, moreover, resource expansion under competitive conditions.
Strength and Success in the Weekly Newspaper Industry: A theoretical Model of Ownership and Resource Partitioning • Rita Colistra, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines the weekly newspaper industry and explains some forces that have led to its success. Weekly newspaper ownership is examined to determine whether the trend toward concentration has moved to engulf the weekly industry. Aspects from Carroll’s resource partitioning model and findings from an earlier study are used to create a model explaining ownership trends of weeklies in differing markets. This model will be useful to researchers interested in newspaper ownership concentration.
A Proposed Measure of the Potential for Scope Economies in Communication Firms • John Dimmick, Ohio State University and Alan Albarran, University of North Texas • In the realm of media firms Bogart (1995, p. 51) defined synergy as “… the transfer of symbolic messages across media boundaries [which] permits a “synergy” that makes the whole larger and more profitable than the sum of its separate parts.” Synergy, then, is achieved by the use of the same or similar symbols in different media to create efficiencies and, thus, higher profits.
Where Do We Fit? What Do We Do? Occupational Role Dilemmas of Advertorialists Within a News Organization • Alyssa Eckman and Thomas R. Lindlof, University of Kentucky • This study examines the effect that working between two organizational spheres – advertising and news – has on newspaper advertorialists and the messages they produce. Qualitative methods, including ethnographic field study, are used to examine the occupational roles of advertorialists and relates those roles to changing meanings of news and advertising. A more complete set of terms and descriptions are offered to define advertorials and enhance understanding of the occupational roles and practices of newspaper advertorialists.
Developing Media Managers for Convergence • Holly Fisher, University of South Carolina • This paper looks at convergent journalism from a management perspective. It addresses accepted definitions of convergence and common media management theories, bringing them together to create directives for media managers who are creating converged newsrooms. The paper looks at how to physically structure the newsroom, developing newsroom roles, how to address newsroom cultural changes, communicating with and managing media employees, and the need for training at all levels needed for implementing convergence in a newsroom.
What Is Means to be the Editor: Top Newsroom Editors’ Management Styles and Attitudes about their Organizational Roles and Support • Peter Gade, University of Oklahoma • A survey of a probability sample of top editors at U.S. newspapers explored their attitudes toward several variables, including two organizational variables considered important to understanding organizational change — organizational integration and perceived organizational support. Responding editors indicated they perceive they are working in integrated organizations, and the level of integration is correlated with their perceived organizational support.
Metroplex Newspapers: A Different Kind of Organization • Steve Hallock, Ohio University • analysis of editorials in two metroplex markets — separately owned newspapers based in neighboring communities that compete for advertisers and readers—found measurable diversity of opinion. But these newspapers differed from directly competing newspapers in their relative lack of attention to local issues of shared interest by their different communities.
Determinants of Cable Program Diversity • Louisa Ha and Lisa Marshall, Bowling Green State University • This paper proposes a framework that examines the determinants of cable program diversity, which includes market competition, the gatekeeping effects of cable system operators, the vertical and horizontal integration of multiple cable system operators (MSOs) and cable networks, the financing of cable networks, and consumers’ demand and viewing habits of television programs. The study shows a 20-year diversity trend of cable networks with policy recommendations addressing these factors to achieve content diversity in cable.
Do Medium and Small Market Dailies Produce Abnormal Profits? • Stephen Lacy and Arvind Diddi, Michigan State University and Esther Thorson, University of Missouri • Data from 1,485 Inland Press Association dailies with less than 85,000 circulation from 1998 through 2002 indicated that most medium and small dailies made abnormal profits, with normal profits defined as the return on 30- year U.S. Treasury bonds. However, dailies under 25,000 circulation averaged about half the profit margin of dailies with 25,000 to 85,000 circulation, and each year, almost 20% of the small dailies actually lost money.
Confrontation or Conciliation? The Plight of Small Media Brands in a Zero-Sum Marketplace • Walter McDowell, University of Miami • Small media brands, operating in a highly competitive zero sum marketplace, reach inevitably a strategic crossroads in which they must decide on confrontation or conciliation with larger incumbent brands. Frontal assaults may foster the promise of market share growth but also provoke serious retaliation. Conversely, appeasement maneuvers may foster reassurance of market survival but also perpetuate economic stagnation.
Exploring the Relationship Between Commercial Pricing and Inventory Sellout Across TV Program Segments: A Case Study • Walter S. McDowell, University of Miami and Steven Dick, Southern Illinois University • Although most television stations already use a number of diagnostic tools to monitor the performance of their sales efforts, there is void in evaluating the relationship between average unit pricing and percent inventory sellout. Using one typical commercial television station as a case study, a correlation analysis of six months of proprietary sales data, representing nine distinct program segments revealed that this pricing/inventory relationship varied considerably across program segments.
Self Sufficiency or Market Transaction? Vertical Integration in the U.S. Television Syndication Market • Goro Oba and Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida • This study explores the programming relationship between vertically integrated syndicators and their affiliated stations in the context of two theoretical frameworks associated with the advantages of vertical integration, the transaction cost and vertical foreclosure theories. The programming on stations vertically integrated with syndicators was assessed along with the destination of programming distributed by those syndicators. The results indicated that vertically integrated syndicators struck the right balance between self-sufficiency and the advantage derived from market transaction.
Managing News in a Managed Media: Mediating the Message in Malaysiakini.com • Augustine Pang, University of Missouri-Columbia • Widely regarded as a deviant web newspaper in Malaysia, Malaysiakini.com is proving that managing an independent media in a government-managed media landscape is more than a Sisyphean struggle. Using ethnography and interviews, this study seeks to understand media management through news management, using Shoemaker and Reese’s (1996) model. Findings show that despite its attempts to minimize governmental influences through media socialization, the greatest impediment to editorial freedom are pressures from extramedia forces, which act as a surrogate ideology.
Video On Demand: Pragmatics of the Holy Grail • Eun-A Park, Penn State University • Many market analysts have prospected that most of on-demand video delivery will be occupied by digital cable VOD outpacing the Internet or other options. Nevertheless, past predictions of when cable VOD would come to the mass market have never materialized. Ultimately, it can be argued that consumers would select a service for watching movies based on their juggling of time, money and utility regardless of the innovativeness of the service.
The effect of mulitmarket contacts on radio station revenue per listener • Heather Polinsky, Central Michigan University • This study investigates the effects of multimarket contacts between the top ten national radio station group owners in 2001. A positive correlation was found between multimarket contacts among the top ten radio station group owners and radio station revenue per thousand listeners, but no evidence of mutual forbearance between the top ten radio group owners was established. However, there is evidence that the top ten radio group owners have an impact on radio market competition.
The News-Sports Management Disconnect in Local Television • Brad Schultz, University of Mississippi and Mary Lou Sheffer, Louisiana State University • A theoretical framework of administrative behavior was applied to the management relationship between news and sports departments in local television. While such departments cooperated to a degree, there was a decided lack of communication on long-range issues such as strategy, audience and implementation. The resulting problems and issues of this management ‘disconnect’ had implications not only for sports, but also for the entire structure and management of local television news.
Digital Technologies and Media Management: Rough Waters Ahead • Dan Shaver, University of Central Florida • In the decades ahead, traditional media organizations will face a transformation in information creation, distribution, and consumption patterns more fundamental than any change since the printing press created the basis for mass communication. “Information” is used here in the broadest sense, including the full array of media content from entertainment to commercial information to news.
Laws of the Marketplace or a Market Culture? The Place of Markets in Explaining the Origins of Political Broadcasting Policy • Tim P. Vos, Seton Hall University • This paper explores how markets were invoked during the early legislative battles over political broadcasting policy. Two distinct logics of historical explanation are considered: 1) an explanation that conceptualizes markets as a real ontological force, i.e., as an extension of the laws of nature, and 2) an explanation that conceptualizes markets as a cultural force, i.e., as part of a market culture. The paper concludes that the historical record best supports a cultural explanation.
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