New York City has been called the media capital of the world. The media organizations based in New York City are internationally influential and include some of the most important newspapers, largest publishing houses, biggest record companies, and most prolific television studios in the world. It is a major global center for the book, magazine, music, newspaper, and television industries. A 2019 Pew Research Center report found that 12 percent of all U.S. newsroom employees live in New York City, disproportionately higher than the 7 percent of the U.S. working-age population that lives in New York City.
New York is also the largest media market in North America (followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto). Some of the city's media conglomerates include CNN (CNN Global), the Hearst Corporation, NBCUniversal, The New York Times Company, the Fox Corporation and News Corp, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in New York. Three of the "Big Four" record labels are also headquartered or co-headquartered in the city. One-third of all American independent films are produced in New York. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city and the book-publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.
Two of the three U.S. national daily newspapers with the largest circulations in the United States are published in New York: The Wall Street Journal; and The New York Times, nicknamed "the Grey Lady", which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's "newspaper of record". Major tabloid newspapers in the city include the New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, and the New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: Century of Journalism, Boni and Liveright, 1922, p. 17. Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, is also widely circulated in the city. The city also has a major ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages. El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation. The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African-American newspaper. The Village Voice was the largest alternative newspaper until it ceased publishing in 2018.
The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, are all headquartered in New York. Many cable channels are based in the city as well, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, and Comedy Central. In 2005 there were more than 100 television shows taped in New York City.
New York is also a major center for non-commercial media. The oldest public-access cable television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.Community Celebrates Public Access TV's 35th Anniversary ;, Manhattan Neighborhood Network press release dated August 6, 2006. Accessed April 28, 2007. "Public access TV was created in the 1970s to allow ordinary members of the public to make and air their own TV shows—and thereby exercise their free speech. It was first launched in the U.S. in Manhattan July 1st 1971, on the Teleprompter and Sterling Cable systems, now Time Warner Cable." WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary provider of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States. The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, NYC Media, that produces several original New York Emmy Award–winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods, as well as city government-access television (GATV).
New York City is home to a number of major online media companies, including Yahoo! and its operations under the AOL brand, along with news and entertainment companies like BuzzFeed and VICE Media.
Media industry profiles
Book publishing The book publishing industry in the United States is based in New York. Publishing houses in the city range from industry giants such as Penguin Group (USA), HarperCollins, Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan to small niche houses like Melville House Publishing and Lee & Low Books. Three courses on publishing, the Columbia Publishing Course, the NYU Summer Publishing Institute, and the CUNY Publishing Certificate Program, train the next generation of editors. New York has also been the setting for countless works of literature, many of them produced by the city's large population of writers (which have included Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Lethem, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag and many others). The New York City metro area, home to the largest number of Jews and Italians outside Israel and Italy, respectively, has also been a flourishing scene for both Jewish American literature and Italian-American literature.
New York is also home to PEN America, the largest of the 141 centers of PEN International, the world's oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. PEN America plays an important role in New York's literary community and is active in defending free speech, the promotion of literature, and the fostering of international literary fellowship. Author Jennifer Egan is its current president.
Some of the most important literary journals in the United States are in New York. These include The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, n+1, and New York Quarterly. Other New York literary publications include Circumference, Open City, The Manhattan Review, The Coffin Factory, Fence, and Telos. New York is also home to the US offices of Granta.
Film
New York is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there. , New York City was the second largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals; the filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly US$9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015, and by volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production – one-third of all American independent films are produced in New York City. The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is also based in New York. In the first five months of 2014 alone, location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013, with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013/2014 cycle. International film makers are featured prominently in New York City as well.
In the earliest days of the American film industry, New York was the epicenter of filmmaking. However, the drier weather of Hollywood and tax incentives offered at the time by filming in Los Angeles made California a better choice for film production throughout much of the 20th century. The Kaufman Astoria Studios film studio, built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields, and has expanded its footprint in Queens. It has also been used for The Cosby Show, Sesame Street and the films of Woody Allen. The recently constructed Steiner Studios is a 15-acre (61,000 m2) modern movie studio complex in a former shipyard where The Producers and The Inside Man, a Spike Lee movie, were filmed.
New York was also important within the animation industry, and remains so to an extent. Until 1938, it served as the home of Fleischer Studios (who produced the Popeye, Betty Boop, and Color Classics shorts for Paramount Pictures) as well as the Van Beuren Studios (who produced animated shorts for RKO Radio Pictures) until 1937. New York was later the home for Famous Studios (who replaced Fleischer Studios and continued the production of Popeye shorts for Paramount) from 1943 to the 1960s. Its current position in the animation world is as an alternative to Los Angeles (where most U.S. animation is produced. The city now houses several schools and school programs concerning animation, and is a source of work for animators working for any medium, from advertising to film.
Silvercup Studios has expanded in Long Island City, Queens with numerous soundstages, production and studio support space, offices for media and entertainment companies, stores, 1,000 apartments in high-rise towers, a catering hall and a cultural institution, built at the edge of the East River in Queens, overlooking Manhattan, and maintaining its status as the largest production house on the U.S. East Coast. Steiner Studios in Brooklyn still has the largest individual soundstage, however. Miramax Films, a Big Ten film studio, was the largest motion picture distribution and production company headquartered in the city until it moved to Burbank, California in January 2010. Many smaller independent producers and distributors are located in New York.
Film-related lists List of film festivals in New York City List of New York City television and film studios
Magazines New York City has a long history in American magazine publishing based in New York City. Billboard Bloomberg Businessweek Brooklyn Magazine The Brooklyn Rail City Limits Cosmopolitan Entertainment Weekly GO NYC Harper's Bazaar The L Magazine L'Idea Manhattan, inc. (defunct) New York The New Yorker Next Magazine Rolling Stone Seventeen The Real Deal Time Out NY Time Vogue
Music
In the 1930s, New York-based RCA was the nation's largest manufacturer of phonographs. In the late 19th and early 20th century, most sheet music in the United States—especially the popular songs of the day, many now standards—was printed at Tin Pan Alley, so called because the constant sound of new songs being tried out on pianos in the publishing houses was said to sound like a tin pan. By the early 1960s the radio and musical stars of the Golden Age of Broadway gave way to the Brill Building's "Brill Sound".
Salsa music, which got its start in New York City in the mid-1960s, was popularized by the New York record label Fania Records, which developed a highly polished "Fania sound" that came to be synonymous with salsa.
In the 1980s and 1990s, hip hop labels including Def Jam, Roc-A-Fella and Bad Boy Records were founded in New York, creating what is known as East Coast hip hop. These labels continue to be among the largest hip-hop labels in the world. Other influential New York-based hip hop labels, past and present, include Cold Chillin' Records, Jive Records, Loud Records, Rawkus Records and Tommy Boy Records.
Two of the "Big Four" music labels are headquartered in the city: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. The world headquarters of MTV is also in New York.
Many major music magazines are headquartered in the city as well, including Blender Magazine, Punk Magazine, Spin and Rolling Stone.
Newspapers
New York City is home to 4 of the 10 largest papers in the United States. These include The New York Times (circulation 571,500), the New York Post (circulation 414,254), and the Daily News (circulation 227,352). The Wall Street Journal (circulation 2.2 million), published in New York City, is a national-scope business newspaper and the first or second most-read newspaper in the nation, depending on measurement method.