nits including Warner Home Video, Home Box Office, and Warner Bros. Pictures. This was the result of a long search by Time Warner to find some company to help them pay off their debt. The venture helped the fiber-optic "full service network" which Time Warner Cable was building for 4,000 homes near Orlando. This construction was to be a model for cable upgrades in the U.S. "Using this 'electronic superhighway' consumers will have access to vast libraries of data and entertainment programming." All of this would make the system more supportive of interactive services.The global media system is now dominated by a group of nine giant firms. The five largest are Time Warner (1997 sales: $24 billion), Disney ($22 billion), Bertelsmann ($15 billion), Viacom ($13 billion), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation ($11 billion). They all operate under the same rule that you must get bigger so that you can dominate markets and you can dominate your competition so that they can't buy you out. Firms like Disney and Time Warner have almost tripled in size this decade. It is also interesting that Time Warner recently combined itself with AOL, one of the largest internet service providers. This means that there are 22 million on the internet through AOL and the offerings of Time Warner will be most apparent to them when they are on the internet at that time. This deal is similar to the deal with US West, as Time Warner will be providing them with cable access, and they will get increased publicity from AOL. The case of the joint venture between Time Warner and US West provides a good example of how working together in cross media activities can be beneficial to these media conglomerates. Because Telephone companies already use much of the similar technologies, it is easier for them to set up some system of interactive two-way services which could eventually allow them to transfer other types of media, such as music. It is not always beneficial...
