America's media business once lionised boutique firms and their iconoclastic bosses. No longer. Like so many other industries, it has come to be dominated by a few huge companies focused squarely on achieving economies of scale. Besides Netflix, a pioneer of video-streaming with a market capitalisation of $131bn, most of the giants were created through mergers. AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner produced a $250bn behemoth. Disney's takeover of 21st Century Fox in March has created a juggernaut worth just under $240bn. Verizon, another telecoms titan, which in 2015 snapped up aol, an online portal, comes in at $230bn. Just shy of $2oobn, Comcast, a cable company which last year bought Sky, a British satellite broadcaster, is the tiddler of the bunch.
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机译：美国的媒体业务曾经使精品店公司和他们破旧不堪的老板蒙混过关。不再。像许多其他行业一样，它已经由少数几家专注于实现规模经济的大公司所主导。除了Netflix（视频流媒体的先驱，市值为1310亿美元）外，大多数巨头都是通过合并而创建的。 AT＆T收购时代华纳（Time Warner）产生了2500亿美元的巨兽。迪士尼在3月收购21世纪福克斯（21st Century Fox），创造了价值近2400亿美元的巨无霸。 Verizon是另一家电信巨头，在2015年以2300亿美元的价格收购了在线门户网站aol。有线电视公司康卡斯特（Comcast）去年的收入仅为20亿美元，该公司去年收购了英国卫星广播公司Sky，这是其中的佼佼者。
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