A new report published by media agency ZenithOptimedia ranks the world's biggest media owners based on revenue created from activities that support advertising.
Time Warner, owners of Home Box Office, Time magazine, Sports Illustrated and Warner Brothers film studio topped the list with $30bn media revenue generated. It was among five other US media owners that topped the list.
Some companies on the list are entirely media-focused while others are corporate giants for which media forms only a small part of their overall turnover.
News Corp, owners of US news channel Fox, newspapers The Sun and The Times and online portal MySpace, ranked number two behind Time Warner, generating $17bn.
Coming in at third was General Electric generating £14.6bn, fourth was CBS Corporation on $13.4bn , fifth was Walt Disney Company with $13.2bn and sixth was The DirecTV Group generating $12.9bn.
The highest ranking UK media owner was BSkyB which was ranked number 11 on $6.8bn [£3.5bn]. Each of the top five ranked owners has at least a half share in a US television network, but their holdings vary in nature and international extent.
In total 16 of the top 30 ranked were US companies. The UK had three in BSkyB, ITV and DMGT.
Two online companies, Google and Yahoo made it into the top 30, ranked number 13 and 15 with revenues of $6bn and $5.2bn respectively.
The top 30 media owners in this report generate a total of $215bn in media revenue.
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