Change can be a frightening thing - particularly if you're in the business of providing news, information and entertainment services or the technology that brings them to you. So it is that Frank Blount, head of Telstra, and Rupert Murdoch, head of News Limited, have found comfort in each others corporate arms - that's to say joint ventures - in operating in an environment that is increasingly founded on change. The happy couple, joined in a marriage of convenience that is being duplicated worldwide by producers of film and television programs, telecommunications and media companies and many others, have produced an offspring - Foxtel - they hope will ward off the cold winds of change.

Such inter-marriage may be a good thing for the bloodline by combining economic power and expertise and by mixing together the different skills the other party lacks. But it seldom affects the "core" businesses that have propelled large corporations to the front of the profit-earning stakes. When a large business is built around a comfortable formula that has delivered healthy returns for a long time it is extremely difficult - if not impossible - for the company to undergo major change.

Apple Computers, although the world's third largest seller of computers, finds it hard to give up exclusive manufacturing rights over its equipment or hardware, even though the rival PC has taken most of its market with cheaper clones made by an army of independent computer makers. Bill Gates, whose Microsoft benefited handsomely from Apple's unbending principles, is himself now in danger of being swept aside by new and smaller companies who haven't yet learnt a restrictive set of rules.

Many telephone or telecommunications companies can't come to grips with the fact that overseas calls are cheaper through the computer-based Internet than your typical 'phone handset and are deliberately limiting international access via the Internet to stall the threat to their revenues. And film and television companies are supporting the non-recordable and expensive CD ROM "platform" and turning a blind eye to the cheaper and more widespread Internet - a medium that one day promises to replace television and telephone networks with computer networks.

Most large companies are preoccupied with finding or keeping partners that at most allow them to mention some new technology in their annual report. This alone will not protect them from the changes coming in the global media shakeout. Their only useful defence will be to buy up new talent and emerging companies at the front of the wave sweeping the networks. The future winners will not be those who find change a chilling wind but rather find it a bracing breath of fresh air.