Aria Media was founded in 2052 by rising BTL star Andrea Riviera and a group of South American and Asian investors with ties to the global entertainment and news industry. Announcing plans to "innovate and explore new avenues of expression and communication in the virtual arena", the corporation received a large boost in its first few years due to its role in developing early commlink technology. While its later successes are mostly attributable to blockbuster BTLs, reality programs and concert promotions, it was this initial foothold in the Matrix that allowed it to eventually rise to the AA ranks. 

Unlike many of its competitors and rivals, Aria Media was able to successfully navigate the disaster of the Crash in '64, offering some of the first reliable coverage on the event when other outlets were still reeling. While contemporary historians and news scholars have debated exactly how accurate these broadcasts were, they cemented the Corp and its subsidiaries' names in the public mind for years to come. The Matrix news program "Tapping the Wire" is still considered a household name for a revolutionary series of reports which covered the bridging of pre-Crash to post-Crash technologies. 

As Aria Media emerged in the newly wireless world, however, its fortunes began to falter. In competition with increasingly savvy and connected outlets funded by the Big Ten, its brief spotlight time ended and it was forced to try and find a new edge on the competition. Desperation to stay relevant in covering the Emergence would lead to secret deals made with Aztechnology, a MegaCorp neighbor, occasional rival, and some-time partner in consumer product promotions. The true fallout from these arrangements (many of which are still unknown) would come about during the Tempo Drug War, in which Aria Media executives were found to have been in bed with several tempo cartels, including the infamous Olayas. Aztech was not amused by this perceived betrayal, mounting a campaign with IDEA to sieze Aria assets and kill or imprison many of its chief executives. 

Reduced to a mere shadow of its former self in the aftermath of this PR and investment disaster, Aria Media would eventually be broken up into several component companies which in turn would be swept up by more successful media ventures such as Horizon. While many of its administrators, employees, and stars have found new management, others never truly recovered from the blacklist and public bashing of their reputations. Rumor has it that the downfall of the corp was engineered by Aztech or Horizon or an unknown third party, and others hint that Aria was about to make a new discovery public when the bottom fell out, a discovery that could have brought it into the AAAs. If true, that research is likely lost or locked up in some other corporation's vaults by now.