New Zealand's media monopoly controls the majority of national content and is made up of four large international corporations; APN News & Media, Fairfax Media, Mediaworks and News Corporation/SkyTV. First, foreign ownership is the result of the lack of government policies and restrictions applied when the Labor government completely deregulated the media sector in 1989 (Cocker, 2008). This provides cause for concern that mass media are in the hands of foreign and non-foreign executives, allowing public service broadcasting to be neglected and further driving bottom-line profit motives. The growing concentration of power in the hands of a very few media giants means that the mass media become an extension of the economic and political power of the executives of these large companies. Media economics explains that this level of concentration occurs through horizontal integration and vertical integration, which offers significant opportunities to sell one's products in various sectors of the company (O, Sullivan, Dutton & Rayner, 1994). Horizontal integration