摘要:This paper analyses how competition between media firms influences
the way they are financed. In a setting where monopoly media firms choose to
be completely financed by consumer payments, competition may lead the media
firms to be financed by advertising as well. The closer substitutes the media firms’
products are, the less they rely on consumer payment and the more they rely on
advertising revenues. If media firms can invest in programming, they invest more
the less differentiated the media products are perceived to be.
Note: We are grateful to seminar participants in Bergen, Oslo, Leuven, Chicago,
Toulouse, and New Orleans for helpful comments, and to the Research Council of Norway
for financial support. Sørgard’s research was done while he was affiliated with the Norwegian
School of Economics and Business Administration. The views expressed here are the
authors’ own and are not necessarily shared by the Norwegian Competition Authority.