The Media Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy

Location: Business School, Kravis Hall 680

The course is co-taught with Prof. Jonathan Knee of the Business School, and law school adjunct Randy Milch the longtime general counsel and public policy chief at Verizon. Enrollment will be divided between Law and Business students. The course requires a familiarity with US media industries.

The course introduces law and business students to the unusual regulatory and business conditions and challenges in the media industries. A variety of topics are covered including intellectual property, the history and structure of the media industries, communications regulation, strategies of integration and consolidation and patterns of innovation in the media industry.

In combined groups of business & law students, every two weeks we will examine a transaction or issue, on which students will present on both sides and respond to questions. The next week we have principals to the transaction come to class to discuss it.

The textbooks for the class are: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (TMS) by Tim Wu and The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies (COM) by Jonathan Knee, Bruce Greenwald and Ava Seave. The reading assignments for class combine chapters of the book with relevant background materials for most weeks.

Final Grade will be based on Class Participation, Group Work, and Final examination.