• Ad Age, Monday, January 9, 2006 10:15 AM

Like just about everybody else out there in news media, Ad Age is billing 2005 as the year the media industry's scales finally started their inexorable tip in the direction of the Internet. Broadcast TV ratings fell to their lowest all-time levels, newspaper stocks plummeted, and Google rose to prominence as the world's most valuable media company. As the article points out, Google's $130 billion market cap makes it worth more than the combined total of Time Warner, the no. 2 media company, four of the top newspaper companies including New York Times Co., Clear Channel Communications, the leading radio conglomerate, and magazine publisher Meredith Corp. However, Google's $5 billion in revenue over the last four quarters was absolutely squashed by those seven companies' combined $68 billion.  However, Google's ad growth has been so robust that it should easily break into the top 20 media companies in terms of revenue last year once its earnings are released. By comparison, Microsoft's revenues ten years ago were about equal to Google's, but its $53 billion market cap was about 40 percent of Google's current value. Google's meteoric rise was certainly media's biggest story of 2005, but the article also points to the clamor over portable devices, newspapers' nosedive, and job cuts at major media companies. 

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