Introduction to media institutions

INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA INSTITUTIONSLesson Objectives: To be able to identify and describe a range of media institutions, using appropriate terminology.

What links these things?

All are products of News Corp

Section B: Institutions and Audiences You need to be aware of contemporary

film industry practices in relation to: Production Distribution Marketing Ownership Synergy Proliferation Technology

You also need to be aware of the different ways in which audiences consume films, and be able to relate this to your own practices as a consumer.

Case Studies

You will need to develop a range of detailed case studies using contemporary films as examples.

Ownership and Consumption What was the last film you watched? What was the last TV programme you

watched? What was the last magazine or

newspaper you read?

Do you know who they were produced by?

Do you know who owns that company?

Major Media Institutions

In terms of revenue The Walt Disney Company is the biggest media conglomerate. It’s revenue in 2010 was $38 billion

News Corp was the second largest with revenue of $32 billion.

Time Warner is the third largest media conglomerate with revenue of $25 billion.

Conglomerates

The Walt Disney Company, News Corp, and Time Warner are all examples of media conglomerates.

A conglomerate is the combination of two or more companies of different types, usually involving a parent company, and subsidiaries.

Parent Company

Subsidiary

Subsidiary

Subsidiary

Media Conglomerates

Look at the subsidiary companies owned by the major media conglomerates and note down some examples.

Media Ownership The conglomerates are examples of

cross-media ownership.Cross-media ownership is when one company owns media outlets from different types of media. For example News Corp own television companies like Sky, newspapers like The Sun, and websites like MySpace.

Concentration of media ownership The concentration of media ownership is

the process where fewer companies or people come to own an increasing share of media companies.

Most of the major media outlets are owned by a small number of companies.

Concentration of media ownership

In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. … [I]n 1987, the fifty companies had shrunk to twenty-nine. … [I]n 1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty three. … [I]n 1997, the biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. … [In 2000] AOL Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times larger [than the biggest deal of 1983].

Media Consolidation

What effect might the concentration of media ownership have?

Criticisms:•Media conglomerates are able to dominate the media industry•Some media conglomerates have been accused of bias in their news reporting•They lead to globalization of popular culture•Reduces diversity in ownership and production•Reduces competition between different companies

Media Consolidation

In small groups select one of the following tasks: Find out what films are currently being shown

at the local cinema. Which companies produced them?

What record labels are the artists in the current Top 10 on? Who owns the record labels?

What are the most popular magazines in Britain? What different companies produce them?

What are the most popular newspapers in Britain? Who owns them?