It has not been an easy year for the big media companies — or, more precisely, the ever-expanding corporate entities that own the significantly smaller ‘big’ three broadcast television networks.

Disney (which owns ABC), Viacom (which owns CBS) and GE (which owns NBC Universal) all watched their stock prices fall over the first three quarters of 2005. And all three entered 2006 with major changes ahead. Disney was replacing its CEO. Viacom was splitting into two separate entities. NBC was working to regain the strong ratings and financial footing it had when it merged with Vivendi Universal, as its entertainment offerings lagged and Microsoft pulled out of its partnership in MSNBC, one of the network’s cable news offerings.

One method of evaluating the companies and their individual components is to compare revenue totals for the parent companies with those of their subdivisions. Every year, Advertising Age publishes a list of the 100 largest media companies, listing their worldwide parent revenue as well as total revenue for their television and cable holdings. Figures for broadcast still combine news with other programming, but sampling the three figures gives a sense of how crucial (at least financially) the news components are to the parent company. We’ll look at one company at a time.

Viacom posted total company revenue for 2004 of $22.5 billion.1 [1]

Its television revenue (broadcast and cable) accounted for 68% of that figure ($15.2 billion) and broadcast alone made up 38%, or $8.5 billion. The share from broadcast (network and local stations), moreover, was up over 2003, but that is due mainly to Viacom’s total revenue falling, not broadcast’s increasing. Total revenues fell $3.9 billion from 2003 while broadcast revenues increased slightly, by $700 million.

In 2004, Disney’s total company revenue was $30.8 billion. That was up from $27 billon in 2003.

Television made up 36% of that with $11.2 billion. And broadcast revenue in 2004 made up $4.8 billion of that, matching revenues from the previous year. That broadcast share was a slightly smaller percent of the company’s overall revenue (16%, down a point from the year earlier).

Meanwhile, GE took in total revenue in 2004 of $152.4 billion, up some $18 billion from 2003. Perhaps unsurprisingly, television (broadcast and cable combined) accounted for a small component at such an expansive parent company. In 2004, NBC’s broadcast revenue increased to $7.5 billion from $6.2 billion a year earlier, but made up just 5% of GE’s total company revenue.

Cable contributed just 1% to the overall picture. And what will happen to that small figure following Microsoft’s decision to cede the MSNBC cable network to NBC Universal is uncertain.

Television Revenue as Percent of Total Corporate Revenue, 2004
Dollars in Billions

2004 Broadcast Revenue	2004 Cable Revenue	2004 TV Revenue (Broadcast + Cable)	2004 Total Revenue	2004 Broadcast Revenue as % of Total	2004 Cable Revenue as % of Total	2004 TV Revenue as % of Total
Viacom	$8.5	$6.7	$15.2	$22.5	38%	30%	68%
Disney	$4.8	$6.4	$11.2	$30.8	16%	21%	36%
(GE) NBC Universal	$7.5	$2.1	$9.6	$152.4	5%	1%	6%

Source: Advertising Age, "100 Leading Media Companies," 2004 data, www.adage.com [2].
Dollars in Billions

Journalism, of course, is only a tiny fraction of those figures. If 5% of GE’s revenue is derived from broadcasting and cable, what comes from news is only a very small portion of that — a portion harder still to determine. Along with MSNBC, GE’s cable operations include Bravo, USA and more. NBC’s revenues include the hours of entertainment programming, not just the fraction that comes from news programming. The same rule of thumb plays out across the other networks. As companies grow and assume increasingly diverse industries under their various umbrellas, news, even if it happens to be growing in absolute terms, becomes an ever-smaller component.

For example, consider NBC and its position within NBC Universal, a division of conglomerate GE. With six separate business divisions (it was an even more daunting 11 until mid-2004) NBC Universal is something of an odd-man-out in a lineup that includes GE Infrastructure, GE Industrial, GE Commercial Financing, GE Healthcare and GE Consumer Finances. The same parent company that brings you the “Nightly News” and the “Today Show” is also creating aircraft engines, locomotives, private-label credit cards, medical imaging technologies and nuclear energy equipment.

On the other hand, when Viacom decided to divide into two entities, one based on broadcast television and the other on cable television, CBS News became a larger component of its new conglomerate parent.

Broadcast Revenue as Percent of Total Corporate Revenue, 2003 vs. 2004

2003 Broadcast Revenue	2004 Broadcast Revenue	2003 Total Revenue	2004 Total Revenue	2003 Broadcast Revenue as% of Total	2004 Broadcast Revenue as% of Total
Viacom	$7.8	$8.5	$26.6	$22.5	29%	37%
Disney	$4.8	$4.8	$27	$30.8	18%	16%
(GE) NBC Universal	$6.2	$7.5	$134.2	$152.4	5%	5%

Source: Advertising Age, "100 Leading Media Companies," 2004 data, www.adage.com [2].
Dollars in Billions

Television Revenue as Percent of Total Corporate Revenue, 2003 vs. 2004

2003 TV Revenue (Broadcast + Cable)	2004 TV Revenue (Broadcast + Cable)	2003 Total Revenue	2004 Total Revenue	2003 TV Revenue as% of Total	2004 TV Revenue as% of Total
Viacom	$13.4	$15.2	$26.6	$22.5	50%	68%
Disney	$10.3	$11.2	$27	$30.8	38%	37%
(GE) NBC Universal	$8.2	$9.6	$134.2	$152.4	6%	6%

Source: Advertising Age, "100 Leading Media Companies," 2004 data, www.adage.com [2].
Dollars in Billions