The New Zealand media monopoly controls the majority of domestic content and is made up of four major international companies; APN News and Media, Fairfax Media, Mediaworks and News Corporation/SkyTV. First, foreign ownership is a result of the lack of government policies and restrictions implemented when the Labor government completely deregulated the media sector in 1989 (Cocker, 2008). This raises concerns that mass media is in the hands of foreign, non-media executives, allowing public service broadcasting to be neglected and more heavily weighted towards profit motives. The increasing concentration of power in the hands of a very small number of media giants is leading the media to become an extension of the economic and political power of the leaders of these large companies. Media economics explains that this level of concentration occurs through horizontal and vertical integration, which provide significant opportunities to sell their own products in various areas of the business (O, Sullivan, Dutton, & Rayner, 1994) . Horizontal integration