TV features heavily in top media firms list

Media agency ZenithOptimedia has ranked the world’s top media owners, with Disney, Comcast, Fox and CBS all in the top five.

They sit after technology and serach giant Google, which takes the number one slot and has extended its lead in the position.

“Google is now 136% bigger than the second-largest media owner [Disney], up from 115% a year earlier,” Zenith noted. “It is also bigger than the second-largest and third-largest [Comcast] combined.”

The survey measures the biggest companies in the media sector by revenue. RTL and FremantleMedia owner Bertelsmann is sixth, ahead of Viacom and Time Warner.

Further down the rankings, Discovery Communications came in, in thirteenth, Brazilian giant Globo was seventeenth and Japanese broadcaster Fuji was nineteenth, one place ahead of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Globo was the third-fastest growing company across the rankings, with media revenues up 15% year-on-year. CCTV was the only other company in Zenith’s report in what it defined as an ’emerging market’.

“CCTV has more than tripled in size over the past decade,” Zenith noted, adding: “Chinese television is now facing stiff competition for ad budgets from online video and digital media in general, and CCTV too is likely to find it tough to increase its revenues from its core business.”

Other TV and content-related companies in the rankings include A&E co-owner Hearst in twenty-second, Italy’s Mediaset in twenty-fifth and UK commercial broadcaster ITV in twenty-seventh.

Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 was one place after ITV and one ahead of Japan’s NTV.