Mexico -an emerging country

My previous blog made a few comparisons between Canada and Mexico.Most Canadians would see little commonalities, but on closer scrutiny there are some easy comparisons to our southern neighbour.The communications industry is one area that is not too comparable.Here there is trouble getting good data on the Mexican communications industry but one thing is clear;one man has a tremenduous influence on this industry.His name is Carlos Slim.He was listed in almost all publications as the richest man in the world.Estimates of his wealth vary between $35 and $50 billion.His main source of wealth is the communications industry and primarily but not exclusively the Mexican communications industry.He controls other companies in Central and Southern America.So in Mexico he certainly has almost complete control of the media (including newspapers).He is a very slick and competent operator.The smaller newspapers and television stations have some independent opinions and stories but Mr.Slim's opinions would likely prevail.
In Canada there are three main television networks -CTV,CBC and Global.There is another one in Quebec(the formerTelemedia);other than this there are companies like Corus that own some television but mostly radio stations.There was another network that started to blossom but was bought out largely by Bell Canada;that was the CHUM network.It now is part of CTV owned by Bell Canada.Statistics Canada has very good data on television networks.For example,CTV was owned by the Thompson family and sold to Bell Canada for exactly the same price.They made no profit on the sale of CTV.That's because according to Statistics Canada ,CTV made no profit for three to five years before Bell Canada bought it.Also according to Statistics Canada none of the television networks made any profit for the last three to five years before Global went bankrupt.So how does the networks make money now?It is not clear but maybe from donations from governments.

So the comparison is not great here because Canada has control of the media in several hands since it is an oligopoly. Mexico seems to be almost a monopoly.However the governments that donate money to network coffers will usually ask for their networks receiving money to have almost the exact same opinion.That opinion would differ only slightly form that of Carlos Slim -the richest man in the world in 2012.