• Newsweek, Friday, May 8, 2009 9:30 AM

After a prolonged decline, the long-suffering "vertically integrated media conglomerate," commonly called Big Media, seems to be passing away. It endured as the industry's prevailing business model for nearly a generation, spawning Viacom, News Corp and NBC Universal. But it essentially failed in its goal of giving a handful of companies unprecedented power and outsized profits.

In the prime example of Big Media's demise, a scaled-down Time Warner will soon be left as a sharply focused, purebred content company comprised of filmed entertainment and news brands. Basically, it will be a corporate reincarnation of its original form.

So what is Big Media's legacy? Among its contributions: wireless broadband and DVDs. On the negative side, it gave us the modern mogul -- outsize personalities with jet-setting lifestyles, a sense of corporate omnipotence and entitlement, "corporate America's most damaging form of management." Big Media also revealed that synergy is overrated -- "the most over-hyped concept in American business."

Read the whole story at Newsweek »