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Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between the concentration of ownership among cable companies and diversity in the cable networks during a period of regulatory uncertainty—a period when the cable ownership rules were announced but did not have legal impact due to legal challenges from the industry. The results show that although cable ownership rules had not been legally in effect, they did pose potential threats to the industry and affected the cable television industry by decreasing the level of concentration among cable networks while increasing the level of concentration among cable system operators.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. Timothy Dowd for all he has done to improve this article. This article also benefitted from outstanding suggestions from the anonymous reviewers and editor at Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.
Notes
1. SNL Kagan does not provide information on cable networks having less than 1 million subscribers. Moreover, it does not report certain types of cable networks: local cable networks other than regional sports networks, shopping networks, networks with adult contents, or networks specific to one operator (typically, owned and operated networks).
2. Because it squares market shares, the Herfindahl index (HI) gives more weight to firms with large market shares than does the concentration ratio measures. However, the HI can be obtained only if the market shares of all firms are available. Due to data availability, the HI for cable system operators cannot be constructed.
3. This figure is calculated by summing the squared number of subscribers of each of the cable networks, which was then divided by the total number of subscribers in a given year.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jin Won Chung
Jin Won Chung (Ph.D., Emory University) is an instructor in the department of Sociology at the Catholic University of Korea. Her research interests include organizational behavior, media industry, and sociology of culture..