Media proprietor

A media proprietor or media mogul refers to a successful entrepreneur or businessperson who controls, through personal ownership or via a dominant position in any media related company or enterprise, media consumed by a large number of individuals. Those with significant control, ownership, and influence of a large company in the mass media may also be called a tycoon, baron, or business magnate. Social media creators can now be considered in the realm of media on a mass scale. The creators and founders of such channels deliver media to a large consumer base.

History

In the United States, newspaper proprietors first became prominent in the 19th century with the development of mass circulation newspapers. In the 20th century, proprietorship expanded to include ownership of radio and television networks, as well as film studios, publishing houses, and more recently internet and other forms of multimedia companies. Reflecting this, the term "press baron" was replaced by "media baron", and the term "media mogul" was popularized. In modern relevance, social media sites need to be taken into account such as Facebook in relation to Mark Zuckerberg who is an extremely important Media proprietor. Media and technology play a significant role in mass media production.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey, born January 29, 1954, is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is now North America's first and only multi-billionaire Black. Several assessments regard her as the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Rupert Murdoch

Keith Rupert Murdoch /ˈmɜːrdɒk/,AC, KCSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American media proprietor. Murdoch became managing director of Australia's News Limited, inherited from his father Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch in 1952. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of global media holding company News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate, and its successors News Corp and 21st Century Fox after the conglomerate split on 28 June 2013.

In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired a number of newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York City in 1974 to expand into the U.S. market, but retained interests in Australia and Britain. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet, and became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 1985 to satisfy the legal requirement for U.S. television ownership.

In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed the British broadcaster BSkyB in 1990, and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000, Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.