Corporations and Cultural Industries (Book Review)

Corporations and cultural industries sets out to tackle a clearly delineated and well-articulated goal: exploring the role and position of three major corporations (Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation), in particular since the 1990s. The choice for specifically these corporations is informed by their prominent positions in the globalized market of cultural commodities. Moreover, the different national embedding of these enterprises serves as a basis to illustrate an “incorporated comparison” of these transnational players. Time Warner is based in the USA, News Corporation originates from Australia, but was reincorporated in the USA, and Bertelsmann was founded in Germany (p. 6). These geographical bases inform the different corporate structures of Time Warner as essentially stock market driven, Bertelsmann as embedded in a German corporate tradition and family ownership, and News Corp. as a truly transnational player with firm family control under Rupert Murdoch. Within these disparate contexts, the role of debt and financialization also differs significantly between the three corporations (pp. 392–393). Throughout the analysis, “the corporations are [however] not taken to be individual and separate examples from which generalizations can be made, but interrelated elements of a historically integrated process” (p. 14). As such, the book aims “to analyze the way in which the development of the three corporations embody the expansion of capitalism into the realm of culture and information in manner [sic] which if unrelenting is also highly uneven” (p. 383).

Fitzgerald builds on a political economy approach throughout the book, grounding his argument in a broad and detailed understanding of the literature and illustrates these ideas with detailed (historical) data. The complexity of the position of corporations in economic history is not dismissed as the “book begins with the fundamental premise that the particular period of corporate development within the cultural industries cannot be separated from the history of capitalism in the industrialized countries and the wider global economy” (p. 30). This very argument forms the critical (theoretical) basis of the book. While ample attention is paid to the role of (cultural) corporations in the cultural industries, the relation between corporate and small(er) businesses is not really covered. Yet, this is an element that would help better grounding the book in wider debates on the cultural and creative industries. Particularly the possibly changing relation between corporate and small(ler) players in the cultural industries – as a plausible result of the described de-convergence (e.g. p. 400) – may be a promising avenue for further analysis and critique.

In terms of structure, the book comprises two major parts: Chapters 1 through 3 focus on the theoretical foundations on which the empirical analyses of recent histories of the corporations in Chapters 4 through 6 are built.

The theoretical chapters – which are also rich in empirical data – provide a sophisticated understanding of the ways corporations operate and function in the global cultural industries. Following Miège, for example, Fitzgerald develops three kinds of “logics” at use by cultural industries corporations, as a typology of ways content is managed and commoditized. Two main logics are central: flow (e.g. tv) and publishing (e.g. books), while a “club” logic (e.g. bookclubs) may provide inspiration for dynamic subscription models in the digital age.

While arguing that the “period of accelerated cultural commodification coincides with the restoration of class power through the political project of Neoliberalism” (p. 384), Fitzgerald expands his analyses beyond this (admittedly obvious) ideological frame of reference. In doing so, he transgresses ideological determinism in his assessment of the issues that prevail in the sector. Rather than merely dismissing activities and products developed by the three corporations, he explores differences, and more importantly the different ways they cope with the vast ongoing changes in the field: “while [these corporations] have divested ‘non-strategic’ activities to become more focused on core areas, the degree of corporate restructuring has varied between them, indicating that a unified and coherent shift away from the conglomerate form is unlikely to emerge” (p. 400).

Corporations and cultural industries covers a narrow field, as it focuses on three corporations in a limited timeframe, and many other corporations are not covered in the analysis. While this is in some respects a weakness – after all, the complexity of corporate presence in the cultural industries exceeds the activities and interrelation of the three companies under scrutiny – the narrow, but consistent, focus is in fact one of the strong points of the book. The ample detail provided might be narrow in scope yet forms the basis of a very in-depth rigorous understanding.

The book may not be the best introduction to corporate cultural industries, or cultural industries in general, as some knowledge and jargon are assumed to be known. Yet several introductory books on cultural, media, and creative industries are readily available, more advanced accounts, particularly with the detail and rigour comparable to this one, are scarcer. Given the rich historical data in Chapters 3–6, the many mergers, acquisitions, and sales of (parts of) companies are at times somewhat difficult to follow. More tables and schemata could help in this regard to summarize the intricate histories and ownership structures, thus illustrating the main lines of evolution within the corporations under scrutiny. The potential value of such greater schematic detail is implicitly indicated by Fitzgerald, as he stresses that “the intra-corporate structure of News Corp. is one of the most complex of any transnational corporation” (p. 365).

The current restructuring of News Corporation (see e.g. The Economist, 30 June 2012) will arguably require a considerable addition to Chapter 6. This change was, of course, not foreseen at the time this book was finalized, but the discussion presented will surely provide a compelling basis for further analysis. I am, as a result, looking forward to a revised edition of this book in the future, incorporating post-Leveson inquiry changes in the cultural and media industries.1

Several authors have previously explored the concept, nature, and functions of the cultural industries. Fitzgerald makes a most valuable contribution to this body of literature with an excellent theoretically informed and empirically rich account of a particular section of the cultural industries: corporations. Critical, rich in data, and historically insightful, this book contains a wealth of information for researchers and students of the cultural industries. Corporations and cultural industries may not be the best beginners’ guide to the cultural industries, but is a must read for any serious scholar in the field.

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First published in Cultural Trends 22(2).

Corporations and cultural industries: Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation, by Scott W. Fitzgerald, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2012, 486 pp., $90.00/£57.95 (hardback), $89.99/£57.95 (eBook), ISBN 978-0739144039.