Growth of a Korean Cable TV Company - Case Study of CJ

초록

This study is to address how policy and industry factor have changed the Korea's cable TV industry, particularly focusing on the case of CJ. CJ is the largest cable TV company in Korea with CJ E&M and CJ Hellovision. The former is the largest cable network with 18 channels while the latter is the largest cable MSO in Korea. CJ entered cable TV industry with a just one channel when cable TV introduced in Korea in 1995. However, as cable TV industry faced stagnation, the Korean government alleviated horizontal and vertical integration regulation during 1999-2001. In addition, Registration system was introduced in cable network. This situation gave CJ to merge cable networks and SOs through M&A. With introduction of satellite broadcasting, DMB, IPTV from 2002 to 2008, competition among the new media was fierce. Cable TV industry was growing up through M&A and business diversification. At this time, CJ emerged as one of the big players in media industry. Since 2009, when media law was revised to accommodate more deregulation including considerably mitigating ownership restriction and allowing cross ownership rules, CJ used deregulatory policy as its opportunity to grow. CJ merged its competitive cable networks and SOs. Finally, CJ became not only the largest cable TV company, but also the largest media company in Korea. This study shows integration of policy and industry model influenced how a small media company became the largest media company in Korea.