Communications and Media

Cross-promotion is a form of advertising that involves two or more parties. It involves getting other companies to promote your product. Companies for instance will use the World Cup by referring to themselves as the proud sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. This way they are able to place adverts in various events simply by using the World Cup brand name to promote their products. The problem with cross-promotion is that conglomerates will not take you seriously, and you have to prove to them that you can reach a decent sized audience and at the same time prove that they will benefit from this deal.

Media Conglomerate
A media conglomerate can be defined as a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies and the Internet. News Corporation is one of the worlds biggest media conglomerate founded by Rupert Murdoch, who also doubles as the Chief Executive Officer. In his letter, addressed in the companys 2007 annual report, Rupert Murdoch stated that the company followed a clear strategy of providing a compelling combination of information and entertainment for the largest audience around the globe.

In providing this content, we maintain what we believe is the ideal mixture of established, developing, and new businesses with significant potential. This balance serves an important purpose It guarantees that we always have at least one generation of assets that can be considered our growth assets.

Advertisingpromotion campaigns and its Outcomes
News Corporation assets like newspapers, film studios and broadcast television properties have maintained important brands and trustworthy audiences while remaining the basis upon which the company expands all its activities as well as generate reliable cash flows to fund its new businesses. In addition to this, it has broadened its offerings, from newspapers to feature film, free television, cable chains, books to pay-television and many Internet offerings.

News Corporation has also expanded its reach from Australia to the U.K, the U.S, Continental Europe and to East and South Asia. This formula is best demonstrated by the companys cable network programming - a segment that contains established, upcoming and new channels (News Corporation, 2007). Among its established channels, the Fox News channel has shown strong growth.  Strong advertising sales particularly has driven record operating income and revenue growth. FX, one more of the companys established channels, has been a leader in the basic cable entertainment,  in which it produces double digit operating profits and revenue expansion. The local sports network, National Geographic and SPEED have not been left behind either in terms of growth. Fox International Channels have also seen the companys profits grow up strongly as a result of expansion of its channel audience to a larger global audience. According to Rupert Murdoch, the companys key objective is to transform it from a traditional media giant to into a digital juggernaut.

News Corporation is the worlds leading publisher of English-language newspapers, creating four national banners in the U.K. each week. For instance, The Sun has remained the U.K.s bestselling newspaper, capturing 35 of the daily tabloid market.

The companys portfolio of consumer promotion media and trusted magazines has given it incomparable access to shoppers around the world. For instance, News America Marketing (NAM) delivers brand messages to more than 200 million shoppers through an extensive portfolio of products, which include special interest publications and free-standing inserts in Sunday newspapers across the U.S and Canada. It has also increased its retail network with new products such as Shelf Vision Video, a first of its kind at shelf-video machine that can be found in more than 36, 000 stores. News Corporation is also involved in book publishing. HarperCollins, its global book publishing division, boasts of selling more than one million copies of new titles in the fiscal 2007.  This has once again proved why it is one of the worlds leading book publishers.

But even as media conglomerates press for policies that seek to facilitate their markets throughout the world, McChesney (1999), notes that strong traditions of protection for domestic media and cultural industries still persist.  The ongoing trend toward centralized ownership of mass media is seen as a threat to journalistic freedom and the public interest.

Conclusion
Despite the good intentions a large media conglomerate may have, central ownership deprives the media of the independence that turns out to be very vital in a democracy. In addition to this, older media should be encouraged to merge so as to cut costs or many traditional media voices will be silenced by economic realities. Economies of scale can also be achieved if media companies agreed to combine operations.  For instance, a company owning more than four television stations in a single location could market advertising, and take care of the stations engineering operations in a more efficient way than a number of stations owned by different individuals. Take for example the case of News Corporation. The expansive nature of News Corporation enabled it widen its scope from Australia to the US, the UK, Europe and Asia. This strategy enabled the company establish a solid and strong cable network programming, which was ultimately reflected in the companys profit growth.