Wall Street’s Content Wars: Financing Media Consolidation

If we frame the ongoing streaming transition occurring in the cultural industries as ‘content wars,’ with metaphoric ‘battlefronts’ in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, and on Madison Avenue, then the silent arms dealer in this conflict is Wall Street and the investor class, whose financial engineering goes largely unacknowledged in studies of the media industries. This chapter will explore the impact of private equity in the American film, television, and music industries since 2004. The mercenaries of these content wars, private equity firms have enacted leveraged buyouts in every sector of the cultural industries: major music labels (Warner, EMI), radio networks (Cumulus, Clear Channel/iHeartMedia), film and television production and distribution companies (MGM, Miramax, Univision, Dick Clark Productions), exhibition (AMC, Odeon), the top talent agencies (CCA, WME, IMG), audience measurement (Nielsen), and the trade press (Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard). The arms race in this conflict is the ability to monetize content catalogues across streaming platforms, which is a lucrative opportunity for financialization. From a critical political economy of media perspective attuned to the significance of financial capital, this chapter demonstrates that the financialization of various components of the media sector is facilitating a dramatic extraction of value from the cultural industries, leaving further consolidation in its wake. Who is profiting from the streaming transition and who is losing out? The answers are the same as in the wider economy of the second gilded age: the wealthy are extracting private, untaxed profit from the public arena while the middle class of creatives is being hollowed out. The ‘creative destruction’ of this war is being fueled by financial engineering

In-Depth Portfolio Assessment: Shelby County Schools, Memphis, TN

The 2013 merger of Memphis City Schools (with 103,000 students) and Shelby County Schools (with 47,000 students) was the largest school district consolidation in American history. In its first year of operation, the new Shelby County Schools (SCS) commissioned CRPE researchers to perform a critical review of the district's readiness to implement a portfolio strategy for managing its schools. Based on interviews with internal and external stakeholders and analysis against model system progress, this report outlines CRPE's baseline measurement of where SCS stands in relation to the seven main components of the portfolio strategy. The report also provides suggestions for how SCS can seek progress over the next year, and track progress or decline at future intervals

People Matters: Accounting for Culture in Mergers and Acquisitions

People_matters.pdf: 664 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The Industry and the Unions: An Overview

[Excerpt] This overview chapter provides a framework for the chapters that follow by broadly describing the arts, entertainment, and electronic media (AEEM) industry and the problems confronting it. The overview is presented in four sections focused on: first, the economic structure of the industry; second, unions and bargaining structure; third, the impact of technological changes; and fourth, historical responses on the part of unions and the labor relations system to technological change

Anatomy of a merger : an examination of factors influencing REIT consolidation

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-89).An investigation was made into the factors influencing the recent merger and acquisition activity in the Real Estate Investment Trust ("REIT") industry. Several financial factors influencing consolidation activity were reviewed in theory including the desire to lower the cost of capital to the REIT, to take advantage of economies of scale, and to increase the liquidity of the REIT stock. Strategic factors including vertical and horizontal integration, the desire to influence market rents, and increasing management talent were also noted. The risks of integrating two organizations and the legal and tax implications of REIT mergers were also investigated as to their influence on current merger activity. Observations of three office REIT mergers were made for purposes of comparison with the noted theoretical factors. Although financial factors were the underlying motivation of these mergers, strategic factors including horizontal integration played a visible role in each case. The theoretical and practical observations were then used to create a framework for identifying the presence of acquirers and targets in the office/industrial sector of the REIT industry. Finally, strategic factors were used in combination with identified acquirers and targets in order to attempt to predict logical merger combinations in the future.by L. Jay Timon and Daniel E. Woodward.S.M

CAHRS hrSpectrum (November - December 2002)

HRSpec02_12.pdf: 85 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The Decentering of the Global Firm

This paper describes recent changes in the relationship between firms and nation states. Firms are typically linked to the nation in which they began and are considered to have fixed national identities. While firms have reallocated various activities around the world in response to value creation opportunities, they have largely retained their national identities and their headquarter activities remained bundled in their home countries. This characterization is increasingly tenuous. Firms are redefining their homes by unbundling their headquarters functions and reallocating them opportunistically across nations. A firm's legal home, its financial home and its homes for managerial talent no longer need to be colocated and, consequently, the idea of firms as national actors rooted in their home countries is rapidly becoming outdated. The implications for policy makers and researchers are outlined.

What are Best Practices for Retaining Employees During Mergers and Acquisitions?

The purpose of this report is to guide decision makers at this company, by offering the most recent theories and practices regarding talent retention programs. Recently mergers and acquisitions have become a major part of global business. During the M&A, it is important to manage the organizational and human resource issues. Our team focused on gathering real business cases. Then we highlight some suggestions from the best practices to create successful M&A. It is our intent that the research findings in this report will help to enlighten and inform the company’s leaders to guide the effective human management program centered on key talent, ultimately leading to organizational success

CAHRS hrSpectrum (January - February 2008)

HRSpec2008_02.pdf: 111 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

CAHRS hrSpectrum (July - August 2004)

HRSpec04_08.pdf: 59 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020