Ownership Concentration in the TV Industry

The wish to limit ownership concentration in the media industry has been common in the newspaper sector, but hardly very successful. As commercial television was more extensively introduced, governments saw possibilities of limiting ownership concentration in this sector. One such case is the Swedish TV4, owned at the start in 1991 by a consortium of financial and smaller publishing groups, but now controlled by the biggest player in the national media business. What happened on the way and what were the obstacles to media policy in this field? Some would argue that this is an area in which media policy failed. Alternatively, this development can be understood as a case in which the nature of corporate policy is revealed. A third option would be to observe the interaction between corporate interests and the government as an example of so-called political management. This article examines these scenarios in the context of commercial television in Sweden. The case study provides a deeper understanding of the nature of ‘institutional competitiveness’, politics vs. business, nationally based media firms vs. other Scandinavian players.