Media Concentration at the Columbia Business School
The Media Program is a unique approach to the study of media management. It was inaugurated in the 1992-93 academic year, and chaired by Eli Noam until 2003.
The concentration is designed for students interested in converging areas of:
- mass media such as television, film, and arts & entertainment
- telecommunications and electronic network services
- information systems, including computers and office automation
- “Information Management,” a rapidly growing function responsible for the management of companies information flows
- electronic commerce
The philosophy of the new concentration is to:
(a) create synergies across divisions, such as Marketing, Finance, Management of Organizations, Business Economics, etc.
(b) prepare students for the merging of the major components of the information sector - media, communications, computers, information systems, etc. The curriculum provides the inter-media exposure and perspective needed to succeed in the future information environment.
(c) take advantage of Columbia's location in New York, the country's most significant business and information center.
Jonathan Knee, Adjunct Professor and Director of the Media Program, heads the concentration. Faculty involved in the courses of concentration includes Profs. Bruce Greenwald, Kathy Harrigan, Morris Holbrook, Eli Noam, Eric Johnson, and Bernd Schmitt. Distinguished practitioners and observers of the media and information sectors also offer courses.
Leo Hindery, former president of TCI, AT&T Broadband, and the YES Network, is Executive in Residence.
Courses that can be taken at other Columbia Schools for purposes of the concentration include:
Law School : Law and Film Library; Law and the Music Industry; Law and Sports; Comparative Mass Media Law; Secondary Liability on the Internet; Securities Law and the Internet
School of International and Public Affairs: Creating a Successful Magazine
School of Journalism: Media and Contemporary Society; Comparative Media Systems
School of the Arts: History of the Producer; The Business of Film.
For student-run activities at the Columbia Business School, see the following web sites:The Technology Business Group and the Media Management Association .
Ph.D. Program in Communications
CITI also played a role in co-founding the campus-wide Ph.D. program in Communications . The goal of the program is to “connect the strengths of the Columbia journalism tradition with intellectual work in the humanities and human sciences in a way that enhances the practice of and our understanding of journalism.”
The program offers an interdisciplinary approach to students in one of four specialities (Journalism and Public Life, Social Impact of Media, Economics and Regulation of Communications, Information and Technological Systems) and brings together faculty and courses from other departments and Columbia divisions, including Political Science and Sociology, and the schools of Business, Law, and Engineering. Successful completion of the program indicates a mastery of the theory, technology, economics and social aspects of communications and media. The Director of the program is Andie Tucher.
Media Management Textbook
A major effort is the creation of a curriculum/course/textbook in media and information management. It involves the creation of a substantive tool content for media and communications management. The traditional approach to this has been to survey various media industries-telecom, wireless, cable, etc. Our mission is to instead introduce students to concepts and tools of management from all parts of the business curriculum
- media accounting
- financing media
- pricing of information products
- marketing media
- demand analysis for media products
- media human resources
- media strategy
- capacity planning
- entertainment law; etc.
These themes cut across the various media industries, and integrate much of the entire B-School curriculum.
Alumni
CITI contribution to students can also be seen through one testimonial of an alumnus, who recently wrote:
“Your unit gave me during 1983-84, while completing my MBA, the environment to research the then primitive concept of pay TV...
I can recall the exact moment and place (on Broadway, near 116th St) where the solution occurred to me, and intend revisiting it on the way to seeing you on the 11th. I pitched the idea to an investor group of newspaper owners immediately after leaving Columbia in April 1984, they bought in, we set up a company called M-Net, launched the service, broke even in 1988 and did an IPO in 1990. ...
Over the years the group expanded out of its base in South Africa to become the biggest media group by far on the continent of Africa (you may have seen some recent coverage in [Time or on CNN]. We also manage the pay TV platforms (much like your DirecTV) in Greece and Thailand, and own 50% of the biggest instant messaging service in China called QQ, which some 48 million Chinese use...
I should like you to know that, if your unit never existed, at least my life and the lives of our 11,800 employees in almost 50 countries would have been very different.”
