Michael Bloomberg Is America's Wealthiest Media Mogul

Bill Gates, with $59 billion, is by far the richest person in America, and Warren Buffett is second with $39 billion, according to the annual list from Forbes magazine.

The first media mogul on the list released Wednesday is Michael Bloomberg, who is No. 12 with $19.5 billion.

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Others from media cracking the list of the 400 richest Americans include Cox Enterprises major shareholder Anne Cox Chambers ($12 billion), News Corp’s. Rupert Murdoch ($7.4 billion), Dish and EchoStar founder Charles Ergen ($6.4 billion), DreamWorks cofounder David Geffen ($5.5 billion) and Liberty Media’s John Malone ($4.5 billion).

Viacom’s Sumner Redstone is 80^th on the list with $4.1 billion, and a little further down is George Lucas ($3.2 billion), Steven Spielberg ($3 billion), Oprah Winfrey ($2.7 billion) and HDNet’s Mark Cuban ($2.3 billion).

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Ted Turner, who lost billions during the AOL Time Warner debacle, is No. 212 on the list with $2 billion, just behind and ahead of several heirs of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Several new-media pioneers, which Forbes categorizes as tech moguls, placed much higher than traditional media executives. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example, all placed in the Top 20.

Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron did not make the list, nor did anyone who is primarily known as an actor.

The complete list is here.