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The Newspaper Industry in Britain, Germany and the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Karin Wagner
Karin Wagner*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research and International Institute of Management, Science Centre, Berlin
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Abstract

This article contrasts the structure and productivity performance of the British newspaper industry with that of its German and American counterparts. The emphasis on national newspapers in Britain has led to much larger plants and a more concentrated industry than in either of the other countries, but the expected gains in productivity from economies of scale have not been apparent. The article then examines the implementation of the new technology and the importance of industrial relations in the successful operation of this mass-production industry.

Type
Other
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 95 , February 1981 , pp. 81 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

∗

This article is condensed from one of a series of comparative industrial studies undertaken at the National Institute, by a team led by S. J. Prais, with the financial support of the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society. In line with the rest of the industries covered in this study, ‘Britain’ is used to refer to the United Kingdom and ‘America’ to the United States.

References

page 81 note (1) Royal Commission on the Press 1961-62, Report, Cmnd 1811, London, HMSO, 1962, p. 19; see also Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, Final Report, Cmnd 6810, London, HMSO, 1977. Similar issues were raised in a well argued section on the press in the German Monopolies Commission's report for 1976-7, pp. 385-422. The proposed take-over of The Times by Mr Rupert Murdoch (see below) has raised this issue in practice because of his stake in other UK news papers and commercial television.

page 83 note (1) For an extensive discussion of the importance of econo mies of scale, see Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, Interim Report, p. 6, and Concentration of Ownership in the Provincial Press by N. Hartley, P. Gudgeon and R. Crafts, London, HMSO, 1977, pp. 10.5-10.15; Deutsche Bundestag, Medienbericht (1978), p. 38; also C. F. Pratten Economies of Scale in Manufacturing Industry, Cambridge University Press, 1971, and A. Silberston, ‘Economies of scale in theory and practice’, Economic Journal, vol. 82, March 1972 (supplement), p. 369.

page 83 note (2) Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, Concentration of ownership in the provincial press, p. 60; see also, Deutsche Bundestag, Medienbericht (1978), p. 37, which points out that the second largest newspapers in German towns in 1974 were less profitable than average.

page 83 note (3) Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, op. cit. pp. 37 and 340.

page 83 note (4) An exemption from general anti-trust legislation is given by the Newspaper Preservation Act with the object of securing a variety of opinions. The Attorney General can permit joint operating agreements between a profitable newspaper and one which is in danger of financial failure, on condition that their editorial departments are kept separate.

page 83 note (5) Cf. Anthony Smith, Subsidies and the Press in Europe, London, Political and Economic Planning, 1977, p. 23.

page 84 note (1) Their shares were: News Group, 37 per cent; Mirror Group, 19 per cent; Beaverbrook Newspapers, 14 per cent; Associated Press, 10 per cent (see Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, Industrial Relations in the National Newspaper Industry, p. 230). Springer, 29 per cent; Stuttgarten Nach richten, 7 per cent; Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 per cent; Du Mont, 4 per cent (see H. Diederichs, ‘Daten zur Pressekonzentration’, Media Perspectiven, no. 5, 1977, p. 273). The four largest American companies were Knight-Ridder, Newhouse Newspapers, Tribune and Garret (ibid., no. 12, 1978, p. 856).

page 84 note (2) Plant size is measured by number of employees and the median is here defined so that half the employees in the industry are in plants greater than it, and half in plants that are smaller.

page 84 note (3) See ‘The strike proneness of large plants in Britain’, by S. J. Prais, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 1978, p. 368.

page 85 note (1) OEEC, A Comparison of National Output and Productivity, pp. 150-2. There is a need to reconsider the method used there by Paige and Bombach: they gave a positive weight to both tonnage of newsprint and circulation; but it seems more appropriate to devise an index of the average number of pages set up, by dividing the former by the latter. This would be equivalent to giving circulation a negative weight, and corre spondingly a weight greater than unity would apply to tonnage. A combined output-measure based on number of words set up, square inches of pictures, and number of copies rolled off, would be better still, but such an exercise was beyond our resources.

page 85 note (2) For more detailed descriptions see: Royal Commission on the Press 1975-77, New technology and the press, p. 11, and Industrial relations in the national newspaper industry, pp. 25-41.

page 87 note (1) S. Jenkins, ‘Why The Times and Sunday Times vanished’, Encounter, August 1979, p. 60.

page 87 note (2) Ibid., p. 61.

page 87 note (3) Price Commission, The Daily Telegraph Limited, HMSO, London, 1979, p. 3.

page 87 note (4) Economist, 27 October 1979, pp. 13-14.