Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Oligopoly

News cooperation - Rupert Murdoch
Viacom
Sony
Disney
Vivendi
Bertelsmann


Disney:
- Background
The walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment organisation in the world in terms of revenue. It was founded on October 16th 1923 by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney and known as 'Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio' the company was later renamed in 1929 as 'Disney Productions Ltd' and publicity-traded as 'Walt Disney Productions in 1938.'
First Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry, before diversifying itself into live-action film production, television and travel. In 1986 the company expanded its existing operations and also started divisions focused upon theatre, radio, publishing and online media. In addition, it has also created new divisions in order to market more mature content that it typically associates with its flagship family-oriented brands.

Today the company is best known for the products of its film studio, which is one of the largest and best-known studios in Hollywood. Disney also operates broadcast television network ABC, various cable television networks. Disney has many merchandise which the company sells and owns licenses to 11 them parks around the world. An early and well-known cartoon creation of the company, Mickey Mouse, is the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company.
- Revenue 
In 1991, including Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, Disney Consumer Products, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney Media Networks and Walt Disney Internet Group/Disney Interactive Media Group, in total the company made $6,111m and including the same categories in 2010 the company's total income was $38,063m increasing their profit by six. After tax was taken off the company made net profit of $1094m in 1991 and $7586m in 2010 making them a hugely successful organisation and indeed they continue to be growing, with the last number of employee's recorded being 150,000 in 2008 and this number is rising every year.
- Criticism
Even thought the company has clearly had unlimited *BLANK, the organisation has had some criticism. Some of Disney's animated family films for example, have drawn fire for being accused of having sexual references hidden in them and this resulted in recalls and modifications of the films to remove such content. A further down point, is that some religious welfare groups have also shown their disprove of some of the content shown in the films. In addition to these social controversies,  the company has been  accused of human rights violations regarding the working conditions in factories that produce their merchandise.
Aside from all these controversial points about the organisation, Disney was, and still continue's to be one of the most successful companies all over the world and continues to generate a huge amount of money each working year. Although the criticisms are not good for the company, as the organisation is known so well all around the world these minor imperfections do not seem to dampen the companies extraordinarily good reputation.  
Research taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company#Corporate_history

No comments:

Post a Comment