Three companies control 90% of UK newspaper market and 40% of total audience reach of top 50 online news brands
by marketrent
Three companies control 90% of UK newspaper market and 40% of total audience reach of top 50 online news brands
by marketrent
5 comments
I haven’t read a newspaper (if you exclude The Metro) for about 20 years. I don’t understand why people do and I don’t understand why other new outlets (TV, radio etc.) give newspapers such heavy promotion.
TV and radio go through the newspaper headlines daily. News shows have whole segments where they look through the papers. I’ve always wondered if they have to pay the papers for re-publishing their stories.
Media Reform Coalition (MRC) reports that even fewer companies control larger shares of the media landscape since its previous analysis in 2021:^1
>The Daily Mail Group (DMG), News UK and Reach own 90 per cent of the UK’s national newspaper market over all, placing control of the press in the hands of just a handful of oligarchs. They also have 40 per cent of the total audience share of the top 50 online news brands.
>On top of this, Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev owns the Evening Standard, and has the largest shareholding in the Independent.
>The forthcoming auction of the Telegraph titles and Spectator magazine also risks further reducing the diversity of voices in the UK’s national press.
>The MRC report notes that local journalism is “in peril” in its report.
>Around 2.5 million people live in areas without a single local newspaper, and across print and online publishing more and more local titles are being closed or consolidated into generic ‘hub’ websites, producing little to no news in the areas they claim to cover.
“Despite the launch of a number of independent and hyper-local outlets, the absence of sustainable funding and support for local public interest journalism means the sector remains shackled to the commercial imperatives of a few apathetic publishing giants”, the report says:^†
>10 of the top 15 online platforms used to access news in the UK are owned by Meta, Google and X Corp (owners of X/Twitter).
>Meta and Google command around four-fifths of all online advertising spend, giving these two tech giants unparalleled power over how online news is found and funded.
^1 https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/three-companies-control-90-of-uk-newspaper-market-report-360437/
^† https://www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Who-Owns-the-UK-Media-2023.pdf
And all three companies are owned by Rupert Murdoch…
> The Daily Mail Group (DMG), News UK and Reach own 90 per cent of the UK’s national newspaper market over all.
All of which are right-wing and beholden to the Tory party and corporate interests. Troubling.
Fuck News Corp and fuck Murdoch, all of them even James doesn’t get a pass even though he’s not as bad as his brother or Dad.