Media (De)concentration and Editorial Cross-Media Self-Promotion: Evidence from Flanders

ABSTRACT

This article asks what the impact is of ownership concentration and deconcentration on editorial cross-media selfpromotion. Zooming in on two significant ownership changes in the small and highly concentrated media market of Flanders (Belgium) in 2017-18, we quantitatively analysed 1,209 articles published in the two largest Flemish newspapers comparing periods before and after two significant moments of ownership concentration and deconcentration. We assess the immediate impact of these changes on cross-media self-promotion between newspapers and audio-visual channels in terms of frequency, length, and presence of visual cues in referencing to media brands belonging to the same mother company and brands that belong to the rival commercial media company. We also measure references to the public broadcaster as a control variable to check whether changes before and after mergers, and/or differences between newspapers from both media groups might be explained by factors other than ownership changes. Our analysis reveals that concentration in Flemish media ownership led to significantly more coverage of the "own" brands of the newspaper’s overarching company. We discuss the broader implications of our Flemish findings, with the two most dominant private media corporations rapidly expanding their brand portfolios in several European countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-promotion
• media concentration
• media cross-ownership
• self-promotion
• self-coverage
• journalism
• Belgium

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on findings from a study commissioned by commercial media broadcaster SBS Belgium, intended to assess cross-media self-promotion of media brands in Flanders. The study was independently executed. The results were discussed in the Media Commission of the Flemish Parliament in November 2020.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In January 2021, the channel was rebranded and renamed to Play Vier (in lower case). We retain its former name as this was in use during the time of our analysis.

2 To indicate the power divisions in the Flemish TV market, the general market shares for the three channels for the entire Flemish population aged 4 and older in 2020 were the following: 19.5% for VTM, 7.2% for VIER and 30.9% for Eén (cim.be 2021).

3 Between August 2020 and January 2021, four other DPG Media-owned linear TV channels were rebranded from Q2, Vitaya, CAZ and CAZ2 to VTM2, VTM3, VTM4 and VTM GOLD. This seems to indicate that the shift towards the brand VTM as visible in the reporting of HLN heralded a more explicit strategy at the level of DPG Media to position VTM as its leading audio-visual brand.