#3 - Ownership

What do we mean by media “ownership”?

•          All media works (whether it’s film, print, music, video games etc.) is owned by a company

•          That company holds the rights to produce, publish and distribute that piece of media. The media product is their intellectual property.

•          They are also legally responsible for its content (complaints, regulation, legal action)

Media Ownership Key Issues

It involves looking at:

•          How the ownership of film companies affects their financing, and therefore the way that they produce, market, distribute and exhibit their media product.

Media Industry Theory

Power and media industries - Curran and Seaton	Cultural industries - David Hesmondhalgh
•          The idea that the media is controlled by a small number of companies primarily driven by the logic of profit and power. •          The idea that media concentration generally limits or inhibits variety, creativity and quality •          The idea that more socially diverse patterns of ownership help to create the conditions for more varied and adventurous media productions.	•          The idea that cultural industry companies try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration, and by formatting their cultural products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials) •          The idea that the largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries. •          The idea that the radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries
To what extent could these theories be considered optimistic about the media industry? as companies do not really worry about risk and only how to maximize profits as well as for Curran and Seaton that the industry is run by a large variety of people and that it does not affect peoples thoughts as much as perceived to

Film Ownership

·         As soon as film is completed in its shoot, the producer contacts distributors of one territory or more distributors of different areas so as to sell its film in the cinema halls. All rights of a film are sold to distributors.

·         The distributor then negotiates with the exhibitors who own chain of theatres. Hence, private ownership of the films gets transferred to distributors.

Industry Structure

•          A conglomerate is a company, which owns large numbers of other companies, usually in various different media.

•          Companies owned by a conglomerate are subsidiaries of that company.

 

Provide a brief definition of the term cross-media ownership		To what extent is NBC Universal an example of cross-media ownership?
List the potential advantages and disadvantages of cross-media ownership
Advantages	Disadvantages

Oligopoly: When the market is dominated by a small number of companies. 


Different types of integration

Vertical Integration

•          All of these big five studios were vertically integrated.

•          Vertical integration is where one company controls a product from the planning/development stage, through production, to distribution, right through to the consumer.

Horizontal Integration

•          Horizontal integration is where one conglomerate owns many similar companies in the same area.

Provide evidence that NBC Universal is vertically integrated and horizontally integrated.