Many of our favourite TV shows, films, newspapers and magazines used to be produced by the same companies, but that is changing fast. We take a look at today's biggest players in the media market and the pretenders to their throne.

iHeartMedia used to be known as Clear Channel Communications and specialises in US radio and outdoor advertising. Robert Pittman (pictured) has been CEO since 2011, and was one of the men who oversaw the creation and growth of MTV in the 1980s.

iHeartMedia owns 861 radio stations in the US, reaching 110 million listeners each week. It also operates 107,000 display advertising structures in North America and 540,000 display units across Asia, Australia and Europe. The line-up for the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival featured Justin Timberlake, Mariah Carey, Jack White, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Fleetwood Mac.

Although Discovery Communications distributes 48 international brands, which reach more than 2.6 billion subscribers in more than 220 countries worldwide, its US networks still generate two-thirds of its profits. CEO since 2007, David Zaslav (previously) was previously an executive at NBC Universal.

Formerly Discovery Communications, the company owns 19 TV networks in the US including the eponymous Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Science Channel, TLC. It also has other major regional operations such as Eurosport, Lionsgate and UKTV (co-owned with BBC Studios).

News Corp, in its current form, came about after the former News Corporation split its information and publishing business and its broadcasting and film business (21st Century Fox) into two in 2013. Its current CEO is Australian journalist Robert Thomson, who was previously managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor of the UK's Times newspaper.

News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post in the US and The Times and The Sun in the UK. It also owns the promotions company News America Marketing, Barron's magazine and book publisher HarperCollins.

The New York-based multinational mass media conglomerate has interests primarily in film and television. Voting control of Viacom is held by National Amusements, Inc., a privately-owned theater company controlled by its founder, 95-year-old media magnate Sumner Redstone (pictured).

Viacom comprises of BET Networks, Viacom Media Networks, and Paramount Pictures and runs more than 250 TV channels worldwide, including MTV, Nickelodeon, Channel 5 in the UK, and Comedy Central, with its hit shows South Park, The Daily Show and Futurama.

Joseph Ianniello took over as interim CEO of CBS Corporation in September 2018 upon the resignation of Les Moonves. CBS derives most of its revenue from its TV channels and radio stations.

CBS Corporation has a 50% stake in The CW Network and it has a joint venture with AMC Networks to run international channels like Horror Channel and CBS Drama. CBS also owns 117 US radio stations. The CBS Television Network broadcasts to more than 200 affiliated stations, which are home to hits like NCIS, Criminal Minds, The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Big Bang Theory.

Bertelsmann was founded as a publishing house by Carl Bertelsmann in 1835 and is one of the world's largest mass media companies. Based in Gütersloh, Germany, its CEO is Thomas Rabe (pictured), who has advanced the business with music rights and an educational division.

Bertelsmann owns European TV and radio group RTL, book publishers Penguin Random House, magazine publishers Gruner + Jahr, music company BMG and marketing company Arvato. Often featuring on The New York Times' best sellers lists, Penguin Random House accounts for about one in four books sold and some of its most famous recent titles include the Fifty Shades series, Nigella Lawson's cookbooks and Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

21st Century Fox is one of the two companies formed from the 2013 spin-off of the publishing assets of News Corporation, as founded by Rupert Murdoch (pictured with wife Jerry Hall) in 1979. It deals primarily in the film and television industries. On 27 July 2018, shareholders agreed to sell the company to The Walt Disney Company for $71.3 billion (£54.6bn).

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21st Century Fox owns the huge Fox Broadcasting and Fox Sports TV companies, plus STAR India, and it has a 39% stake in British broadcasting company Sky. The Simpsons, Family Guy, Prison Break, All McBeal and 24 are among the network’s biggest hit shows.

Since June 2018, AT&T is the parent company of mass media conglomerate WarnerMedia, formerly Time Warner. The current chairman, chief executive officer and president is Randall L Stephenson (pictured), who also served as National Chair of the Boy Scouts of America from 2016 to 2018.

In October 2018, WarnerMedia announced plans to launch a steaming service to compete with Amazon and Netflix by the end of the following year. One of the most successful divisions of the company is HBO, the home of Game of Thrones, Westworld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and True Detective. 

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The House of Mouse was founded on 16 October 1923 – by brothers Walt and Roy Disney – as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, and also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before officially changing its name to The Walt Disney Company in 1986.

The Disney Channel is perhaps the best-known of Disney's TV properties, but it also owns Lucasfilm, and therefore the rights to the Star Wars franchise, Pixar, Marvel Studios, ESPN and US national TV network ABC, which broadcasts shows such as Modern Family and Grey's Anatomy. Disney also owns a 50% stake in digital media company Fusion and a 33% stake in video streaming platform Hulu.

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As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is a producer of feature films and TV programs. It owns and operates the Xfinity cable communications subsidiary. Founder Ralph J Roberts’s son, Brian (pictured), is the current CEO and President.

The majority of Comcast's media revenue comes from its NBCUniversal cable networks and broadcast TV divisions including USA Network, Syfy, CNBC, Telemundo and NBC, including its hit shows The Blacklist, Friends, Will & Grace and Saturday Night Live. The rest of Comcast's media revenue comes from its cable business, and it also owns video streaming service Hulu.

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Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994. Now a trillion-dollar company, the e-commerce giant's Amazon Prime division makes up just a small part of that revenue...

With more than 100 million members worldwide, Amazon Prime gives customers access to streaming video, free shipping, Prime Day discounts and a variety of other services. Among the hit original series on Amazon Prime Video are The Man in the High Castle, Sneaky Pete, Transparent, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Vanity Fair (a co-production with the UK's ITV) and The Grand Tour. Amazon has also bought the rights to 20 English Premier League games in the UK from 2019. 

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard social-networking website quickly developed a global internet phenomenon after it was founded in 2004. Every day, content creators around the world – from digital publishers, to public figures, to video producers – use Facebook to connect with their audiences. But Facebook is moving away from just being a social network.

Facebook has bought the rights to screen Spanish La Liga soccer games across southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, English Premier League soccer matches in southeast Asia and UEFA Champions League and UEFA Super Cup matches in Spanish-speaking Latin American territories from 2018 to 2021.

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The holding company that owns Google was created through a corporate restructuring of Google in October 2015 and the two founders of Google assumed executive roles in the new company, with Larry Page serving as CEO and Sergey Brin as President. One of the brands it owns is YouTube, which is making moves into producing original content as well as hosting it.

YouTube has recently expanded its subscription-based YouTube Premium, which features a host of exclusive shows produced by its most popular stars, to 12 other countries.

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Founded back in 1997 by Reed Hastings (pictured) and Marc Randolph, Netflix survived some turbulent early days before capitalising on the online streaming market. And now it's evolved from merely hosting films and TV series to producing them...

A recent earnings report beats most analysts' expectations, and that's in part because Netflix is luring subscribers with acclaimed original series such as Stranger Things, House of Cards, Orange Is The New Black, BoJack Horseman and The Crown.

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The Chinese multinational technology company generates 96% of its revenue from advertising. Baidu was founded by software developer Robin Li (pictured) in 2000, who remains current Chairman and CEO. But it has other plans...

The Chinese language search giant is the fourth largest in the world behind Google, Bing and Yahoo but it's now also investing hundreds of millions of dollars into film and TV production.

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