Media Companies
The four major companies – from a national perspective – have a weighted audience share of 86.7% across TV, radio, and print across the country. However, there is no media company that cross-owns outlets between the audiovisual and the print sectors. Some major owners, nevertheless, are present across sectors. The only obvious cross-ownership is between the audiovisual and online sectors on the one hand, and the print and online sectors on the other hand. Most TV stations have websites that reproduce the content of what is broadcast but also have their separate editorial teams and exclusive web content. The same applies to some newspapers, including Annahar, L’Orient-Le Jour, The Daily Star, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Joumhouria, which have dedicated teams for their online platforms that often publish web-only content.
Apart from the state-owned media outlets, all media companies are privately owned. Most of them are registered as Joint Stock Company (Société anonyme libanaise /ش.م.ل.) or Limited Liability Company (Société à responsabilité limitée/ش.م.م.). Some media outlets are not associated with a media company, as they are individually owned companies (تاجر) (e.g. Bint Jbeil, Lebanon Debate, Al Kalima Online, or El-Shark), or because they are parts of an association (Law of 1909) (e.g. Ya Sour, Tayyar.org or Lebanese-Forces.com).
Most of the companies were created as legal entities of the media outlet they own and do not own other media outlets. The Lebanese Communication Group L.C.G. SAL (Al-Manar and Al-Nour), Al Jadeed SAL (Al-Jadeed and Al Jadeed 90.3 FM), and the National Broadcasting Network SAL (NBN and Al-Risala Radio) are the only companies in the media selection operating in more than one audiovisual media sector.