The top media companies increasingly do a lot more than create movies, television shows, music, and books. Twelve companies in particular--AOL Time Warner, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Disney, General Electric, Liberty Media, Microsoft, News Corp., Sony, Viacom, and Vivendi Universal--have invested in the cable pipes that deliver content, the cable networks that play it, and the radio and television stations that broadcast it. Now they're investing in, and partnering with, the companies making the set-top boxes, digital video recorders, and other entertainment hubs--systems like Digeo/Moxi, TiVo, and ReplayTV--that will distribute content within the home.
These companies are also investing in video-on-demand services, delivered over the cable systems they largely own, or over the Internet. They're also some of the top companies in video games, music, and book publishing. With research provided by the Project on Media Ownership, which is part of the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, this web of media inter-relatedness is shown in a graphically rich two-page chart in IEEE Spectrum's July issue.
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