The initial media research mainly focused on the role and function of media, and most media scholars came from sociology, psychology, politics, history and literary criticism. In the second half of the 20th century, with the development of the advertising industry, the economic power of the media has increased, newspapers and magazines have become increasingly prosperous, and commercial radio and television have been making profits. Even public radio and television have begun to use advertisements as a means to increase their income. These changes and the intensification of industry competition have led to more and more commercial and economic problems.

The study of media economics began in 1950s. Early scholars mainly devoted themselves to the study of newspaper competition and the structure and regulation of radio and television. In 1960s and 1970s, media scholars began to discuss media issues with the method of political economy, paying attention to the power structure that influenced the media.

Since 1970s, especially after the development of cable TV and the emergence of many problems in newspaper industry, more and more economists and business scholars have begun to explore the media. French Demoulain specifically analyzed the media industry from the perspective of economics; Nieto published his early works on magazine publishing in Spain, and in 1985, he completed the Spanish book Lopez on media economics. In the United States, the works of Irving, Bibi and Manning have made important contributions to the study of economic problems in television (Ovcen, etal, 1974).

In 1980s, more and more research works on media economics began to appear. This new research route has greatly changed the situation of ignoring media enterprises as commercial and economic institutions. Since 1980s, many studies have provided references for a series of economic and financial problems, such as the organization and operation of media enterprises, the competition among media enterprises, the consumption of media products, and so on, especially the problems of concentration and monopoly. The important achievements of this period include: discussing the economic structure and organization of the media industry (Picard,1989; Albarran, 1996), pays attention to the economic problems of the world media (Al-Balaam and Chen-olmsted, 1998) and the economic problems of specific media fields (Irving and Vildman,1992; Picard et al.,1988; Collins, Garnham and Locksley,1989; Dunnett, Lacey and Simon, 1993, etc.

Although people's interest in media economics has been increasing since 1980s, the number of scholars active in this field is still very limited. They are scattered all over the world and distributed in different academic projects, including news, broadcasting, communication, economy, commerce and politics. In the past two or three decades, media economists from all over the world began to merge. The annual telecom policy research conference, the annual meeting of the Radio and Television Education Association, the annual meeting of the News Mass Communication Education Association and the biennial World Media Economic Conference make the communication between scholars more frequent and convenient.

At the same time, academic journals in this field have also begun to be established. From 65438 to 0987, at the initiative of Robert, the Journal of Media Economics was founded in the United States. Piccard and others. This journal published its first issue in the spring of 1988, and has since become the core journal in the field of media economics. From 65438 to 0999, international media management magazines appeared in St Gallen, Switzerland, and paid more attention to management issues. In 2004, with the publication of the Journal of Media Business Research by Yan Xueping of Sweden, the research in this field was strengthened again. The research methods, themes and trends covered by these publications provide important indicators for the development of media economics. After 1980s, works on media economics often focused on introducing basic concepts and methods, such as discussing media expenditure (Wood, 1986) and studying media financial performance (Litman &; Bridges, 1986), research and forecast income (Ad-alTIS, 1987), welfare economics and media relations research (Bustema, 1988), measurement centralization (Picard, 1988), through the media company's

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the structural changes of wireless and wired media became the focus of attention. Scholars use the method of studying industrial organization and competition to explain and discuss the convergence problem in cable TV industry (Chan-Olrrmted &; Littmann, 1988), Pluralism (albarran &; Porto, 1990), the problem of TV syndicated market (Chan- Olmsted, 199 1), the market impact of entry barriers of radio and television (berry & Waldfogel, 1999), vertical integration of information distribution (Walterman, 1993) and centralization (Sparks,1995: Barran &; Dimick, 1996), etc.

In 1990s, academic focus shifted from basic market-oriented research, and new concepts and methods were introduced into this field. New topics include strategic analysis (Barett,1996; Chan-Olmsted, 1997), Discussion on the Value of Media Company (Bat,1995; Miller, 1997) and pricing problem (Shav-er, 1995). At the same time, it will become a research center (Gets-hon,1993; Holtz-Bacha, 1997). The analysis of the world media economy includes the productivity of the graphic arts industry (Paasio, Picard,&; Toivonen, 1994), Competition in the Changing European TV Market (Powers, Kristjarksdotti,&; Sutton, 1995), magazine globalization (Hafstrand, 1995) and how public service broadcasting is affected by policy and market changes (Boardrnan and Vining, 1996).

From the end of 1990s to the beginning of the new century, macroeconomic issues, such as the impact of economic depression on the media (piccard, 200 1) and media constraints in the global economy (piccard &: Riemel, 1999), began to be concerned. Scholars put more emphasis on analyzing the market environment and behavior of media companies rather than paying attention to the market. During this period, about media empire (Picard, 1996) and enterprise inheritance (Wolfe &; Katx~r, 1998), m&a research (Chan-Olmsted, 1998), comparative strategy research of companies (Shrikhande, 200 1), company selection research (Picard, 2002a), and company economics and finance research (. Discussions on the revenue streams and business models of interactive TV (Pagani, 2000), online content (Picard, 2000) and free newspapers (Ba kker, 2002) also began to appear.

With the development of media economics research, media economic education has also begun to rise. The content of the course education includes full-time study in 1990s, MBA programs of Northwestern University, Fordham University, St Gallen University in Switzerland, and MBA programs of senior managers of Finnish Tuku University. The University of Navarra in Spain, the University of Southern California and university of stirling in Scotland also offer master's programs. Indiana University, Yan Xueping International Business School, University of Michigan, University of Cologne, Dortmund University, Navarra University, University of Florida, University of St. Galindo, University of Southern California, etc. all offer doctoral courses in media economics and management.

Non-English media economics textbooks developed rapidly in the 1990s. Piccard's books have been translated into Chinese, Korean and Spanish; The original textbooks are published in French, German, Polish, Russian and Hungarian. Many research results and teaching materials of media economics are widely spread around the world; Many countries that didn't fully open their media markets in the past also introduced the experience of other countries, hoping to provide reference for their own media market reform and system transformation.