Max Allfree
Understanding the nature and purposes of research in the creative media
industry
The Structure and Ownership of KM Group and News Corp
The KM Media Group was formed over 150 years ago as an independent, family
owned business. From just a Newspaper publisher, the KM Group has grown into
a multimedia company1. Whereas News Corp is a conglomerate that owns many
enterprises since the 1950’s; Rupert Murdoch owns this organisation and has
managed it to become one of the five largest media conglomerates in the world. 2
To some extent the KM Group is a cross media company because of its work
within radio and small amount the put into TV, however, when compared to
other businesses you can see that they are small.
Board of directors of News Corp
The board of directors within News Corp shows a variation of leading positions
owned by a select few. The Executive Chairman, Co-Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer are all blood relations, not only are powerful families involved
high up within the structure of News Corps, also former leading political figures
such as a former Prime Minister of Spain and the 24th U.S. Secretary of Labor.
News Corp is a cross media company, meaning they own or integrate with other
companies from different sectors.
Companies within the magazine industry that News Corp
 Australian Golf Digest
 Big League
 MasterChef Magazine
 Vogue Australia
3
News Corp also own newspapers within the UK, Australia and the United States,
there are also plenty of book publishers owned, including
 HarperCollins
 Harlequin Enterprises
 Zondervan publishing
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/km-group/
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/news-corporationlimited-history/
3 http://www.newsspace.com.au/magazines
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Max Allfree
The size and structure of any company has an affect on the consumer in various
ways, however with these two companies, because of the huge gap in size they
differences are extreme. For example, stereotypically, smaller magazines have
less reporters and ground to cover but due to the rapport they build with the
community, they will normally have more in depth and truthful stories.
However the KM is famous for its poor relationship with the local audience,
which can be seen through their Facebook page. Due to the small size of the KM
they don’t have many fact checkers other than the audience, who can slightly
influence the paper but without any authority the KM can get away with lying
about certain things.
News Corp has much greater production and distribution levels because of their
size and structure, this size and structure is so large because they operate on a
multinational level, whereas the KM Group only operate at a regional level.
However, due to the size of the conglomeration a lot more work has to be put
into the logistical side of the business, whereas within the KM group there are
only a few members of the team who an be contacted and watched easily. Due to
the multinational aspect of News Corp they have much greater access to stories
and the audience can be focused on by employee’s to really get to grips with
what the audience wants. The negative aspect of this is that because they have
such a large audience, they have to use a lot more of their assets to focus on
particular sections of said audience.
The KM’s small stature means they cannot offer as much choice as News Corp,
this I for a multitude of reasons, such as age, gender and socioeconomic status of
their audience, but mainly because of budget restrictions when compared to
News Corp’s almost unlimited budget. Due to the size of News Corps range of
publishing, it is beneficial for them to share the same stories over a multitude of
media to a new audience because its recycled work that gather a larger audience.